Opinion ID: 4564398
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the only discrete agency action challenged in

Text: GENTILE’S COMPLAINT IS THE SEC’S FORMAL ORDER OF INVESTIGATION OF TRADERS CAFÉ. Gentile seeks very broad relief. His complaint prays that the SEC’s investigation be deemed an unauthorized abuse of process, that all subpoenas be quashed, and that the SEC be barred from using any evidence obtained from the subpoenas “for any purpose in any future proceeding.” Compl. at 24 (App. 46). Each of those requests for relief other than money damages depends on the legal question of whether the SEC has legal authority to investigate him. Without such authority, the SEC could not permissibly investigate Gentile, issue subpoenas, or initiate further proceedings. But the APA’s statutory standing requirement excludes from judicial review legal questions untethered to agency action. 5 U.S.C. § 702. Rather, the APA’s waiver of sovereign immunity extends only to challenges to agency action. See id. To that end, the APA enumerates several specific categories of agency action. See 5 U.S.C. § 551(13) (defining “agency action” so that it “includes the whole or a part of an agency rule, order, license, sanction, relief, or the equivalent or denial thereof, or failure to act”). Those categories are exemplary, not Act to preclude consumers from challenging milk marketing orders). 11 exhaustive,10 and the APA also enables a person to challenge “some particular ‘agency action.’” Lujan v. Nat’l Wildlife Fed’n, 497 U.S. 871, 891 (1990). Thus, the APA allows challenges to discrete agency action, but not broad challenges to the administration of an entire program. Such programmatic challenges “cannot be laid before the courts for wholesale correction under the APA.” Id. at 893. Under those standards, Gentile’s complaint challenges only one discrete agency action: the SEC’s Formal Order of Investigation of Traders Café. Gentile argues that the Formal Order of Investigation exceeds the SEC’s authority because it does not have a sufficient nexus to his conduct and because it allows a retributive investigation.11 By attacking the Formal 10 See, e.g., U.S. Army Corps of Eng’rs v. Hawkes Co., 136 S. Ct. 1807, 1811, 1813 (2016) (permitting judicial review under the APA of a “jurisdictional determination” by Army Corps of Engineers); Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, 177-78 (1997) (permitting judicial review under the APA of a “biological opinion” issued by the Fish and Wildlife Service). But see Norton v. S. Utah Wilderness All., 542 U.S. 55, 62-63 (2004) (holding that a “failure to act” means only “a failure to take one of the agency actions (including their equivalents) earlier defined in § 551(13)”). 11 See Compl. ¶ 101 (App. 45) (describing the controversy as concerning “(a) the authority of the [SEC] to investigate individuals under a [Formal Order of Investigation] which has no nexus to them, and (b) the authority of the [SEC] to investigate an individual for more than five years after a [Formal Order of Investigation] has issued for purposes that are plainly punitive and retributive . . . .”). 12 Order of Investigation, Gentile seeks to invalidate the entire Traders Café investigation including the administrative subpoenas served in connection with the investigation. Those administrative subpoenas also constitute a discrete agency action. But Gentile’s complaint does not seek to quash those subpoenas based on any attribute of any individual subpoena. Rather, Gentile aspires to undermine the SEC’s authority for this investigation – with the consequence of nullifying all subpoenas in the matter. Without challenging any individual subpoena or disputing any other discrete agency action, the only agency action challenged by Gentile’s complaint is the SEC’s Formal Order of Investigation.