Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-86_l5gm.pdf
Page Number: 44.0

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

11 

GORSUCH, J., concurring in judgment 

case and then turned about to testify against Ms. Cochran. 
In the end, the ALJ fined Ms. Cochran $22,500 and banned 
her from practicing before the SEC as an accountant for at 
least five years. 

Ms. Cochran responded by asking the full Commission to 
review  the  ALJ’s  decision.   Around  the  same  time,  this 
Court held in an unrelated case that the ALJ who presided 
over  Ms.  Cochran’s  case  had  been  unconstitutionally  ap-
pointed.  See Lucia v. SEC, 585 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (slip. 
op.,  at  2).  Ms.  Cochran  might  have  thought  that  would 
bring her own case to a close.  But the SEC chose instead to 
take  a  mulligan.    In  2018,  the  agency  vacated  the  initial 
decision  against  Ms.  Cochran  and  assigned  a  different, 
properly appointed ALJ to retry the case.  So two years after 
her administrative proceedings began, they began again. 

For Ms. Cochran, that was enough.  She sued the SEC in 
federal district court.  She sought to enjoin the agency’s pro-
ceedings on the ground that all of its ALJs are unconstitu-
tionally insulated from presidential supervision, pointing to 
this  Court’s  decisions  in  Lucia  and  Free  Enterprise  Fund. 
Lucia  held  that  SEC  ALJs  are  inferior  officers  under  the 
Constitution’s Appointments Clause.  585 U. S., at ___ (slip 
op., at 8).  And Free Enterprise Fund held that the President 
must retain adequate  authority to supervise  and  even re-
move such officers.  561 U. S., at 492. 

In 2019, the district court dismissed Ms. Cochran’s suit 
without reaching its merits.  2019 WL 1359252 (ND Tex., 
Mar. 25, 2019).  The court did so because it thought Thun-
der Basin required that result.  Id., at *1.  A year and a half 
later, a panel of the Fifth Circuit ran through the Thunder 
Basin factors and affirmed.  969 F. 3d 507 (2020).  A year 
and a half after that, the en banc Fifth Circuit took another 
look and largely reversed.  20 F. 4th 194 (2021).  Now, more 
than four years after Ms. Cochran filed her complaint, this 
Court balances the Thunder Basin factors anew and holds 
that her case belonged in district court all along.  Ante, at