Lone Candle

“Few figures in American history, however, have less credibility to speak about the importance of the right to a jury trial, as Gorsuch’s very first major Supreme Court opinion was a direct attack on that right. In Epic Systems v. Lewis (2018), Gorsuch wrote for the Court’s Republican majority that employers have a right to force their employees to sign away their right to sue them in any court at all — including courts that protect the right to a jury trial — and to shunt those cases into private arbitration.
Indeed, the Court’s GOP-appointed majority has long been vocal advocates of forced arbitration, dismissing arguments that these privatized forums violate the Seventh Amendment, and often mangling the text of federal statutes to maximize employers’ power to avoid jury trials.

So why is the Court’s right flank suddenly so concerned that unscrupulous hedge fund managers might not get to present their case to a jury? The most likely answer is that the six Republican appointees have sought to centralize power within the Article III courts, often at the expense of federal agencies supervised by the president. The Supreme Court’s recent “major questions doctrine” cases, for example, have given the justices a virtually unlimited veto power over any policy enacted by a federal agency that a majority of the Court does not like.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in particular, was quite explicit during the Jarkesy argument about his belief that federal agencies are too powerful, and that much of this power should be transferred to him and his fellow Article III judges. The Atlas Roofing decision, he noted, is 50 years old, and he argued that the role of federal agencies has become “enormously more significant” in that time.

Roberts also characterized administrative law judges — who, again, are in-house at various federal agencies, but also enjoy robust job protections to insulate them from political pressure — as the executive branch’s “own employees.” His implication appeared to be that Jarkesy’s Seventh Amendment argument is as good of a reason as any to shift power away from these administrative law judges, and towards the Article III branch that Roberts leads.

That said, Roberts and some of his fellow Republican appointees also appeared to cast about for a way to rule in Jarkesy’s favor, without completely upending the government’s ability to resolve cases in administrative forums.

The federal government employs nearly 2,000 administrative law judges, in addition to about 650 non-Article III judges who hear immigration cases. Meanwhile, there are fewer than 900 Article III judges authorized by law. So, if the United States suddenly loses its ability to bring cases in administrative forums, the entire federal system will lose the overwhelming majority of its capacity to adjudicate cases — forcing litigants to wait years before an Article III judge has the time to take up their case.”

…

“Meanwhile, both Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested drawing a line between cases where the government seeks to impose a “penalty” on a defendant, and cases about whether a particular individual is entitled to a federal benefit. That would require most SEC enforcement actions to be heard by an Article III court that can conduct a jury trial, but would also allow the Social Security Administration’s more than 1,600 administrative law judges to continue to determine who is entitled to federal benefits.

In any event, the bottom line is that Jarkesy appears likely to prevail. And the Court’s GOP-appointed majority appears likely to send his case to an Article III court where Jarkesy can receive a jury trial. The Seventh Amendment, it appears, protects hedge fund managers, but not workers.

But, while that result is unlikely to satisfy anyone who does not share Neil Gorsuch’s political views, it would also be a relatively minor attack on the federal government’s ability to enforce the law — and a much less severe attack on US state capacity than the Fifth Circuit’s decision.”

https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/11/29/23980966/supreme-court-sec-jarkesy-administrative-law-judges