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Text: When considering whether a district court’s decision should be subject to searching or deferential appellate review—at least absent “explicit statutory command”—we traditionally look to two factors. Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U.S. 552, 558 (1988). First, we ask whether the “history of appellate practice” yields an answer. Ibid. Second, at least where “neither a clear statutory prescription nor a historical tradition exists,” we ask whether, “ ‘as a matter of the sound administration of justice, one judicial actor is better positioned than another to decide the issue in question.’ ” Id., at 558, 559–560 (quoting Miller v. Fenton, 474 U.S. 104, 114 (1985)). Both factors point toward abuse-ofdiscretion review here.

First, the longstanding practice of the courts of appeals in reviewing a district court’s decision to enforce or quash an administrative subpoena is to review that decision for abuse of discretion. That practice predates even Title VII itself. As noted, Title VII confers on the EEOC the same authority to issue subpoenas that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) confers on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). See n. 1, supra. During the three decades between the enactment of the NLRA and the incorporation of the NLRA’s subpoena-enforcement provisions into Title VII, every Circuit to consider the question had held that a district court’s decision whether to enforce an NLRB subpoena should be reviewed for abuse of discretion. See NLRB v. Consolidated Vacuum Corp., 395 F.2d 416, 419–420 (CA2 1968); NLRB v. Friedman, 352 F.2d 545, 547 (CA3 1965); NLRB v. Northern Trust Co., 148 F.2d 24, 29 (CA7 1945); Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. v. NLRB, 122 F.2d 450, 453–454 (CA6 1941). By the time Congress amended Title VII to authorize EEOC subpoenas in 1972, it did so against this uniform backdrop of deferential appellate review.

Today, nearly as uniformly, the Courts of Appeals apply the same deferential review to a district court’s decision as to whether to enforce an EEOC subpoena. Almost every Court of Appeals reviews such a decision for abuse of discretion. See, e.g., EEOC v. Kronos Inc., 620 F.3d 287, 295–296 (CA3 2010); EEOC v. Randstad, 685 F.3d 433, 442 (CA4 2012); EEOC v. Roadway Express, Inc., 261 F.3d 634, 638 (CA6 2001); EEOC v. United Air Lines, Inc., 287 F.3d 643, 649 (CA7 2002); EEOC v. Technocrest Systems, Inc., 448 F.3d 1035, 1038 (CA8 2006); EEOC v. Dillon Companies, Inc., 310 F.3d 1271, 1274 (CA10 2002); EEOC v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., 771 F.3d 757, 760 (CA11 2014) (per curiam). As Judge Watford—writing for the panel below—recognized, the Ninth Circuit alone applies a more searching form of review. See 804 F.3d, at 1056, n. 3 (“Why we review questions of relevance and undue burden de novo is unclear”); see also EPA v. Alyeska Pipeline Serv. Co., 836 F.2d 443, 445–446 (CA9 1988) (holding that de novo review applies). To be sure, the inquiry into the appropriate standard of review cannot be resolved by a head-counting exercise. But the “long history of appellate practice” here, Pierce, 487 U.S., at 558, carries significant persuasive weight.

Second, basic principles of institutional capacity counsel in favor of deferential review. The decision whether to enforce an EEOC subpoena is a case-specific one that turns not on “a neat set of legal rules,” Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 232 (1983), but instead on the application of broad standards to “multifarious, fleeting, special, narrow facts that utterly resist generalization,” Pierce, 487 U.S., at 561–562 (internal quotation marks omitted). In the mine run of cases, the district court’s decision whether to enforce a subpoena will turn either on whether the evidence sought is relevant to the specific charge before it or whether the subpoena is unduly burdensome in light of the circumstances. Both tasks are well suited to a district judge’s expertise. The decision whether evidence sought is relevant requires the district court to evaluate the relationship between the particular materials sought and the particular matter under investigation—an analysis “variable in relation to the nature, purposes and scope of the inquiry.” Oklahoma Press Publishing Co. v. Walling, 327 U.S. 186, 209 (1946). Similarly, the decision whether a subpoena is overly burdensome turns on the nature of the materials sought and the difficulty the employer will face in producing them. These inquiries are “generally not amenable to broad per se rules,” Sprint/United Management Co. v. Mendelsohn, 552 U.S. 379, 387 (2008); rather, they are the kind of “fact-intensive, close calls” better suited to resolution by the district court than the court of appeals, Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S. 384, 404 (1990) (internal quotation marks omitted).3

Other functional considerations also show that abuse-ofdiscretion review is appropriate here. For one, district courts have considerable experience in other contexts making decisions similar—though not identical—to those they must make in this one. See Buford v. United States, 532 U.S. 59, 66 (2001) (“[T]he comparatively greater expertise” of the district court may counsel in favor of deferential review). District courts decide, for instance, whether evidence is relevant at trial, Fed. Rule Evid. 401; whether pretrial criminal subpoenas are unreasonable in scope, Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 16(c)(2); and more. These decisions are not the same as the decisions a district court must make in enforcing an administrative subpoena. But they are similar enough to give the district court the “institutional advantag[e],” Buford, 532 U.S., at 64, that comes with greater experience. For another, as we noted in Cooter & Gell, deferential review “streamline[s] the litigation process by freeing appellate courts from the duty of reweighing evidence and reconsidering facts already weighed and considered by the district court,” 496 U.S., at 404—a particularly important consideration in a “satellite” proceeding like this one, ibid., designed only to facilitate the EEOC’s investigation.

Amicus’ arguments to the contrary have aided our consideration of this case. But they do not persuade us that de novo review is appropriate.

Amicus’ central argument is that the decision whether a subpoena should be enforced does not require the exercise of discretion on the part of the district court, and so it should not be reviewed for abuse of discretion. On amicus’ view, the district court’s primary role is to test the legal sufficiency of the subpoena, not to weigh whether it should be enforced as a substantive matter. Cf. Shell Oil, 466 U.S., at 72, n. 26 (rejecting the argument that the district court should assess the validity of the underlying claim in a proceeding to enforce a subpoena). Even accepting amicus’ view of the district court’s task, however, this understanding of abuse-of-discretion review is too narrow. As commentators have observed, abuse-of-discretion review is employed not only where a decisionmaker has “a wide range of choice as to what he decides, free from the constraints which characteristically attach whenever legal rules enter the decision[making] process”; it is also employed where the trial judge’s decision is given “an unusual amount of insulation from appellate revision” for functional reasons. Rosenberg, Judicial Discretion of the Trial Court, Viewed From Above, 22 Syracuse L. Rev. 635, 637 (1971); see also 22 C. Wright & K. Graham, Federal Practice and Procedure §5166.1 (2d ed. 2012). And as we have explained, it is in large part due to functional concerns that we conclude the district court’s decision should be reviewed for abuse of discretion. Even if the district court’s decision can be characterized in the way that amicus suggests, that characterization would not be inconsistent with abuse-of-discretion review.

Nor are we persuaded by amicus’ remaining arguments. Amicus argues that affording deferential review to a district court’s decision would clash with Court of Appeals decisions instructing district courts to defer themselves to the EEOC’s determination that evidence is relevant to the charge at issue. See Director, Office of Thrift Supervision, v. Vinson & Elkins, LLP, 124 F.3d 1304, 1307 (CADC 1997) (district courts should defer to agency appraisals of relevance unless they are “obviously wrong”); EEOC v. Lockheed Martin Corp., Aero & Naval Systems, 116 F.3d 110, 113 (CA4 1997) (same). In amicus’ view, it is “analytically impossible” for the court of appeals to defer to the district court if the district court must itself defer to the agency. Tr. of Oral Arg. 29. We think the better reading of those cases is that they rest on the established rule that the term “relevant” be understood “generously” to permit the EEOC “access to virtually any material that might cast light on the allegations against the employer.” Shell Oil, 466 U.S., at 68–69. A district court deciding whether evidence is “relevant” under Title VII need not defer to the EEOC’s decision on that score; it must simply answer the question cognizant of the agency’s broad authority to seek and obtain evidence. Because the statute does not set up any scheme of double deference, amicus’ arguments as to the infirmities of such a scheme are misplaced.

Nor do we agree that, as amicus suggests, the constitutional underpinnings of the Shell Oil standard require a different result. To be sure, we have described a subpoena as a “ ‘constructive’ search,” Oklahoma Press, 327 U.S., at 202, and implied that the Fourth Amendment is the source of the requirement that a subpoena not be “too indefinite,” Morton Salt, 338 U.S., at 652. But not every decision that touches on the Fourth Amendment is subject to searching review. Subpoenas in a wide variety of other contexts also implicate the privacy interests protected by the Fourth Amendment, but courts routinely review the enforcement of such subpoenas for abuse of discretion. See, e.g., United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 702 (1974) (pretrial subpoenas duces tecum); In re Grand Jury Subpoena, 696 F.3d 428, 432 (CA5 2012) (grand jury subpoenas); In re Grand Jury Proceedings, 616 F.3d 1186, 1201 (CA10 2010) (same). And this Court has emphasized that courts should pay “great deference” to a magistrate judge’s determination of probable cause, Gates, 462 U.S., at 236 (internal quotation marks omitted)—a decision more akin to a district court’s preenforcement review of a subpoena than the warrantless searches and seizures we considered in Ornelas v. United States, 517 U.S. 690 (1996), on which amicus places great weight. The constitutional pedigree of Shell Oil does not change our view of the correct standard of review.