SCOTUS Delivers Stinging Rebuke to Federal Bureaucrats
June 27, 2024
The United States Supreme Court on Thursday morning released its opinion in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, et al. and delivered a stinging rebuke to federal bureaucrats and the administrative state. The case dealt with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s practice of seeking civil penalties against defendants accused of securities fraud in-house before administrative law judges without a jury trial — a significant unchecked power wielded by federal bureaucrats…
In a statement congratulating Jarkesy and “his courageous counsel,” New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) President and General Counsel Mark Chenoweth noted that while “others told them that a Seventh Amendment argument stood no chance…Mike McColloch and Karen Cook refused to listen.” The “perseverance” of Jarkesy’s legal team “won a mighty victory against injustice by persuading the Supreme Court to restore jury trial rights to all Americans — even those being hounded by the Administrative State,” Chenoweth emphasized.
Peggy Little, NCLA senior litigation counsel, called Thursday “a day to rejoice” due to the Supreme Court’s “restoration of Americans’ constitutional guarantee of a right to be tried by a jury of their peers.”
Little said the opinion “marks a historic declaration of independence from decades of encroachments by the administrative state” and means the “Dodd-Frank Act’s attempt to extinguish Americans’ jury-trial protections by sweeping securities prosecutions into the SEC’s notoriously biased in-house courts — where agencies prevail 90-100% of the time— has come to a well-deserved end.”
Originally Published in Townhall