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Page Number: 19

14 

AXON ENTERPRISE, INC. v. FTC 

Opinion of the Court 

but  also  civil  and  criminal  litigation—require  parties  to 
wait before appealing, even when doing so subjects them to 
“significant  burdens.”   Brief  for  Federal  Parties  47–49. 
That is true, and will remain so: Nothing we say today por-
tends newfound enthusiasm for interlocutory review.  Re-
turn, for example, to Thunder Basin and Elgin.  There, the 
coal company and federal employee could both have argued 
that  the  statutory  review  process  would  subject  them  to 
greater litigation costs than their preferred suit in district 
court.  But that would not have mattered.  We have made 
clear, just as the Government says, that “the expense and 
disruption”  of  “protracted  adjudicatory  proceedings”  on  a 
claim  do  not  justify  immediate  review.  FTC  v.  Standard 
Oil Co. of Cal., 449 U. S. 232, 244 (1980); see, e.g., Myers v. 
Bethlehem  Shipbuilding  Corp.,  303  U. S.  41,  51  (1938).  
What makes the difference here is the nature of the claims 
and  accompanying  harms  that  the  parties  are  asserting. 
Again, Axon and Cochran protest the “here-and-now” injury 
of  subjection  to  an  unconstitutionally  structured  deci-
sionmaking process.  See supra, at 13.  And more, subjec-
tion to that process irrespective of its outcome, or of other 
decisions made within it.  A nearer analogy  than  any  the 
Government  offers  is  to  our  established  immunity  doc-
trines.   There,  we  have  identified  certain  rights  “not  to 
stand trial” or face other legal processes.  Mitchell v. For-
syth,  472  U. S.  511,  526  (1985).    And  we  have  recognized 
that those rights are “effectively lost” if review is deferred 
until after trial.  Ibid.  So too here, Axon and Cochran will 
lose  their  rights  not  to  undergo  the  complained-of  agency 
proceedings if they cannot assert those rights until the pro-
ceedings are over. 

The  collateralism  factor  favors  Axon  and  Cochran  for 
much the same  reason—because  they are challenging  the 
Commissions’ power to proceed at all, rather than actions 
taken in the agency proceedings.  That distinction, as noted