Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-859new_kjfm.pdf
Page Number: 27.0

22 

SEC v. JARKESY 

Opinion of the Court 

claim, its statutory origins are not dispositive.  See id., at 
52, 56. 

The SEC’s sole remaining basis for distinguishing Gran-
financiera is that the Government is the party prosecuting
this action.  See Brief for Petitioner 26–28; see also Tr. of 
Oral Arg. 25 (Principal Deputy Solicitor General) (the “crit-
ical  distinction”  in  the  public  rights  analysis  is  “enforce-
ment by the executive”); id., at 26 (identifying as “the con-
stitutionally  relevant  distinction”  that  “this  is  something 
that has been assigned to a federal agency to enforce”).  But 
we have never held that “the presence of the United States 
as a proper party to the proceeding is . . . sufficient” by itself 
to trigger the exception.  Northern Pipeline Constr. Co., 458 
U. S., at 69, n. 23 (plurality opinion).  Again, what matters
is  the  substance  of  the  suit,  not  where  it  is  brought,  who
brings it, or how it is labeled.  See ibid.  The object of this
SEC action is to regulate transactions between private in-
dividuals interacting in a pre-existing market.  To do so, the 
Government has created claims whose causes of action are 
modeled on common law fraud and that provide a type of 
remedy available only in law courts.  This is a common law 
suit in all but name.  And such suits typically must be ad-
judicated in Article III courts. 

5 

The principal case on which the SEC and the dissent rely 
is Atlas Roofing Co. v. Occupational Safety and Health Re-
view Commission, 430 U. S. 442 (1977).  Because the public 
rights exception as construed in Atlas Roofing does not ex-
tend to these civil penalty suits for fraud, that case does not
control.  And for that same reason, we need not reach the 
suggestion  made  by  Jarkesy  and  Patriot28  that  Tull  and 
Granfinanciera  effectively  overruled  Atlas  Roofing  to  the 
extent that case construed the public rights exception to al-
low the adjudication of civil penalty suits in administrative