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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.