Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-859new_kjfm.pdf
Page Number: 77

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

17 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

something, this should end the case.  Yet here it does not. 

III 
The practice of assigning the Government’s right to civil
penalties for statutory violations to non-Article III adjudi-
cation had been so settled that it become an undisputable 
reality of how “our Government has actually worked.”  Con-
sumer  Financial  Protection  Bureau,  601  U. S.,  at  445 
(KAGAN, J., concurring).  That is why the Court has had no 
cause to address this kind of constitutional challenge since 
its  unanimous  decision  in  Atlas  Roofing.  The  majority
takes a wrecking ball to this settled law and stable govern-
ment practice.  To do so, it misreads this Court’s precedents, 
ignores those that do not suit its thesis, and advances dis-
tinctions created from whole cloth. 

The majority’s treatment of the public-rights doctrine is
not  only  incomplete,  but  is  gerrymandered  to  produce  to-
day’s  result.    See  Part  III–A  (infra,  at  17–21).   Unable  to 
explain  that  doctrine,  the  majority  effectively  ignores  the
Article III threshold question to focus instead on two Sev-
enth Amendment cases: Tull v. United States, 481 U. S. 412 
(1987), and Granfinanciera, S. A. v. Nordberg, 492 U. S. 33 
(1989).  Neither involved the in-house adjudication of stat-
utory  claims  brought  by  the  Government  pursuant  to  its 
sovereign  powers,  which  is  the  critical  fact  under  this 
Court’s precedent.  See Part III–B–1 (infra, at 22–24) (dis-
cussing  Tull);  Part  III–B–2  (infra,  at  24–29)  (discussing 
Granfinanciera).  The  majority  and  the  concurrence  then 
predictably fail to distinguish Atlas Roofing, which resolved 
the Seventh Amendment question for cases like this one im-
plicating that critical fact.  See Part III–C (infra, at 29–32). 

A 
To start, it is almost impossible to discern how the major-
ity defines a public right and whether its view of the doc-
trine is consistent with this Court’s public-rights cases.  The