Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-859new_kjfm.pdf
Page Number: 82

22 

SEC v. JARKESY 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

this Court’s precedents between the non-Article III adjudi-
cation of public-rights matters involving the liability of one
individual to another and those involving claims belonging 
to the Government in its sovereign capacity.

According to the majority, respondents are entitled to a
jury trial in federal court because, as here, Tull involved a 
Government  claim  for  civil  penalties,  and  Granfinanciera 
looked to the common law to determine if a statutory cause
of action was legal in nature.  By focusing on the remedy in 
this case, and the perceived similarities between the statu-
tory cause of action and a common-law analogue, the ma-
jority elides the critical distinction between those cases and
this one: Whether Congress assigned the Government’s sov-
ereign rights to civil penalties to a non-Article III factfinder 
for adjudication. 

1 
The majority bafflingly proclaims that “the remedy is all
but dispositive” in this case, ante, at 9, ignoring that Atlas 
Roofing  and  countless  precedents  before  it  rejected  that 
proposition.  Not content to take just a page from the em-
ployers’ challenge in Atlas Roofing, the majority has taken
their whole brief, resuscitating yet another theory that this
Court has long foreclosed.  The employers in Atlas Roofing
argued that the Seventh Amendment prohibited Congress
from assigning to an agency the same remedy at issue here: 
civil penalties.  See 430 U. S., at 450 (“Petitioners . . . claim 
that  . . .  assign[ing]  the  function  of  adjudicating  the  Gov-
ernment’s rights to civil penalties for [a statutory] violation 
. . . deprive[s] a defendant of his Seventh Amendment jury
right”).  This Court rejected that argument outright, citing
a long line of cases involving the Executive’s adjudication of 
statutory claims for civil penalties brought by the Govern-
ment in its sovereign capacity.  Id., at 450–455 (collecting 
cases).