Opinion ID: 485228
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Parties' Main Contentions

Text: 27 As the above discussion demonstrates, there is an uneasy tension between this court's decisions in Hastings and Andrade. In Andrade, we permitted the plaintiffs to bring a constitutional challenge to an agency's authority to act without first requiring them to submit their nonconstitutional claims for administrative review. In contrast, we required the plaintiff in Hastings to exhaust the remedies available to him in ongoing proceedings before raising his constitutional challenge to the legitimacy of those proceedings. 28 Not surprisingly, the appellants would have us apply Andrade to the instant case and hold that they may challenge the constitutionality of FTC law enforcement proceedings without first pursuing their nonconstitutional defenses in the ongoing proceedings. As in Andrade (and in contrast to Hastings ), they argue, this court will not benefit from the deferral of judicial review, because the nature of the law enforcement powers exercised by the Commission are well-known, 8 and this court need only decide the purely legal question whether those powers may be exercised consistent with the Constitution. In addition, the appellants argue that the constitutional violation alleged in the instant case--like the violation alleged in Andrade --is a continuing one; even if they prevail before the Commission on nonconstitutional grounds, the Commission will be free to continue in its unconstitutional ways. From this vantage point, there is a significant public interest in deciding whether the Commission may validly exercise law enforcement powers. 29 The Commission, of course, argues that Hastings controls the instant case. According to the FTC, Hastings firmly establishes that ongoing agency proceedings are not to be interrupted in order for a court to entertain constitutional challenges to the authority of those proceedings. The Commission asserts that such an interruption is warranted only where the plaintiff can demonstrate that it will suffer irreparable injury from the withholding of judicial review. Here, it argues, the only injury alleged by the appellants is the cost of litigating their nonconstitutional claims in the ongoing agency proceedings. In Hastings, however, the plaintiff faced the identical burden; because the court would not immediately entertain his constitutional challenge, he would be forced to expend considerable resources defending himself in the allegedly unconstitutional statutory proceedings. Yet, in Hastings, the court found that the plaintiff had not alleged serious and irremediable injury sufficient to warrant the interruption of the ongoing proceedings of the judicial councils. 30