Jarkesy v. Sec. & Exch. Comm'n

• Citation: 34 F.4th 446
• Decision Date: 18 May 2022
• Docket Number: 20-61007
• Parties: George R. JARKESY, Jr.; Patriot28, L.L.C., Petitioners, v. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, Respondent.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (5th Circuit)

34 F.4th 446

George R. JARKESY, Jr.; Patriot28, L.L.C., Petitioners,

v.SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, Respondent.

No. 20-61007

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

FILED May 18, 2022

S. Michael McColloch, S. Michael McColloch, P.L.L.C., Dallas, TX, Karen L. Cook, Karen Cook, P.L.L.C., Dallas, TX, for Petitioners.

Paul Gerard Alvarez, Attorney, Dominick V. Freda, Assistant General Counsel, U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, Washington, DC, Daniel J. Aguilar, Amanda Mundell, Joshua Marc Salzman, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Appellate Section, Washington, DC, for Respondent.

Margaret A. Little, New Civil Liberties Alliance, Washington, DC, for Amicus Curiae New Civil Liberties Alliance.

Russell Ryan, King & Spalding, L.L.P., Washington, DC, for Amicus Curiae Cato Institute.

Samuel Wollin Cooper, Paul Hastings L.L.P., Houston, TX, for Amici Curiae Phillip Goldstein, Mark Cuban, and Nelson Obus.

Before Davis, Elrod, and Oldham, Circuit Judges.

Jennifer Walker Elrod, Circuit Judge:

Congress has given the Securities and Exchange Commission substantial power to enforce the nation's securities laws. It often acts as both prosecutor and judge, and its decisions have broad consequences for personal liberty and property. But the Constitution constrains the SEC's powers by protecting individual rights and the prerogatives of the other branches of government. This case is about the nature and extent of those constraints in securities fraud cases in which the SEC seeks penalties.

The SEC brought an enforcement action within the agency against Petitioners for securities fraud. An SEC administrative law judge adjudged Petitioners liable and ordered various remedies, and the SEC affirmed on appeal over several constitutional arguments that Petitioners raised. Petitioners raise those same arguments before this court. We hold that: (1) the SEC's in-house adjudication of Petitioners' case violated their Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial; (2) Congress unconstitutionally delegated legislative power to the SEC by failing to provide an intelligible principle by which the SEC would exercise the delegated power, in violation of Article I's vesting of "all" legislative power in Congress; and (3) statutory removal restrictions on SEC ALJs violate the Take Care Clause of Article II. Because the agency proceedings below were unconstitutional, we GRANT the petition for review, VACATE the decision of the SEC, and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I.

Petitioner Jarkesy established two hedge funds and selected Petitioner Patriot28 as the investment adviser. The funds brought in over 100 investors and held about $24 million in assets. In 2011, the SEC launched an investigation into Petitioners' investing activities, and a couple of years later the SEC chose to bring an action within the agency, alleging that Petitioners (along with some former co-parties) committed fraud under the Securities Act, the Securities Exchange Act, and the Advisers Act. Specifically, the agency charged that Petitioners: (1) misrepresented who served as the prime broker and as the auditor; (2) misrepresented the funds' investment parameters and safeguards; and (3) overvalued the funds' assets to increase the fees that they could charge investors.

Petitioners sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to enjoin the agency proceedings, arguing that the proceedings infringed on various constitutional rights. But the district court, and later the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, refused to issue an injunction, deciding that the district court had no jurisdiction and that Petitioners had to continue with the agency proceedings and petition the court of appeals to review any adverse final order. See Jarkesy v. SEC , 48 F. Supp. 3d 32, 40 (D.D.C. 2014), aff'd , 803 F.3d 9, 12 (D.C. Cir. 2015).

Petitioners' proceedings moved forward. The ALJ held an evidentiary hearing and concluded that Petitioners committed securities fraud. Petitioners then sought review by the Commission. While their petition for Commission review was pending, the Supreme Court held that SEC ALJs had not been properly appointed under the Constitution. Lucia v. SEC , ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S. Ct. 2044, 2054–55, 201 L.Ed.2d 464 (2018). In accordance with that decision, the SEC assigned Petitioners' proceeding to an ALJ who was properly appointed. But Petitioners chose to waive their right to a new hearing and continued under their original petition to the Commission.

The Commission affirmed that Petitioners committed various forms of securities fraud. It ordered Petitioners to cease and desist from committing further violations and to pay a civil penalty of $300,000, and it ordered Patriot28 to disgorge nearly $685,000 in ill-gotten gains. The Commission also barred Jarkesy from various securities industry activities: associating with brokers, dealers, and advisers; offering penny stocks; and serving as an officer or director of an advisory board or as an investment adviser.

Critical to this case, the Commission rejected several constitutional arguments Petitioners raised. It determined that: (1) the ALJ was not biased against Petitioners; (2) the Commission did not inappropriately prejudge the case; (3) the Commission did not use unconstitutionally delegated legislative power—or violate Petitioners' equal protection rights—when it decided to pursue the case within the agency instead of in an Article III court; (4) the removal restrictions on SEC ALJs did not violate Article II and separation-of-powers principles; and (5) the proceedings did not violate Petitioners' Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. Petitioners then filed a petition for review in this court.

II.

Petitioners raise several constitutional challenges to the SEC enforcement proceedings.¹

We agree with Petitioners that the proceedings suffered from three independent constitutional defects: (1) Petitioners were deprived of their constitutional right to a jury trial; (2) Congress unconstitutionally delegated legislative power to the SEC by failing to provide it with an intelligible principle by which to exercise the delegated power; and (3) statutory removal restrictions on SEC ALJs violate Article II.

A.

Petitioners challenge the agency's rejection of their constitutional arguments. We review such issues de novo. See Emp. Sols. Staffing Grp. II, L.L.C. v. Off. of Chief Admin. Hearing Officer , 833 F.3d 480, 484 (5th Cir. 2016) ; Trinity Marine Prods., Inc. v. Chao , 512 F.3d 198, 201 (5th Cir. 2007).

B.

Petitioners argue that they were deprived of their Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. The SEC responds that the legal interests at issue in this case vindicate distinctly public rights, and that Congress therefore appropriately allowed such actions to be brought in agency proceedings without juries. We agree with Petitioners. The Seventh Amendment guarantees Petitioners a jury trial because the SEC's enforcement action is akin to traditional actions at law to which the jury-trial right attaches. And Congress, or an agency acting pursuant to congressional authorization, cannot assign the adjudication of such claims to an agency because such claims do not concern public rights alone.

1.

Thomas Jefferson identified the jury "as the only anchor, ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine (July 11, 1789), in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson 267 (Julian P. Boyd ed., 1958). And John Adams called trial by jury (along with popular elections) "the heart and lungs of liberty." The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams 55 (C. Bradley Thompson ed., 2000); see also Jennifer W. Elrod, Is the Jury Still Out?: A Case for the Continued Viability of the American Jury , 44 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 303, 303–04 (2012) (explaining that the jury is "as central to the American conception of the consent of the governed as an elected legislature or the independent judiciary").²

Civil juries in particular have long served as a critical check on government power. So precious were civil juries at the time of the Founding that the Constitution likely would not have been ratified absent assurance that the institution would be protected expressly by amendment. 2 The Debate on the Constitution 549, 551, 555, 560, 567 (Bernard Bailyn ed. 1993) (collecting various state ratification convention documents calling for the adoption of a civil jury trial amendment); The Federalist No. 83 (Alexander Hamilton) ("The objection to the plan of the convention, which has met with most success in this State [i.e., New York], and perhaps in several of the other States, is that relative to the want of a constitutional provision for the trial by jury in civil cases."); Mercy Otis Warren, Observations on the Constitution (1788), in 2 The Debate on the Constitution 290 (Bernard Bailyn ed. 1993) (worrying that the unamended Constitution would lead to "[t]he abolition of trial by jury in civil causes"); Parsons v. Bedford , 28 U.S. (3 Pet.) 433, 446, 7 L.Ed. 732 (1830) ("One of the strongest objections originally taken against the constitution of the United States, was the want of an express provision securing the right of trial by jury in civil cases.").³

Trial by jury therefore is a "fundamental" component of our legal system "and remains one of our most vital barriers to governmental arbitrariness." Reid v. Covert , 354 U.S. 1, 9–10, 77 S.Ct. 1222, 1 L.Ed.2d 1148 (1957). "Indeed, ‘[t]he right to trial by jury was probably the only one universally secured by the first American state constitutions ....’ " Parklane Hosiery Co., Inc. v. Shore , 439 U.S. 322, 341, 99 S.Ct. 645, 58 L.Ed.2d 552 (1979) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (quoting Leonard Levy, Legacy of Suppression: Freedom of Speech and Press in Early American History 281 (1960)). Because "[m]aintenance of the jury as a fact-finding body is of such importance and...