We didn't get the Loper Bright ruling or a final decision on the Chevron doctrine today. However, the Supreme Court may have kicked a strut out from underneath the bureaucratic state today unexpectedly, in a case involving the Securities and Exchange Commission -- and the Seventh Amendment.

The case of SEC v Jarkesy originates in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which granted federal regulators expanded authority to pursue and adjudicate civil-fraud complaints within the executive branch alone. One of its early targets was George Jarkesy, Jr., and his firm, Patriot28, LLC for allegedly violating anti-fraud provisions in SEC law and regulation. The SEC both charged and adjudicated the case of civil fraud against Jarkesy and fined him $300,000.

Jarkesy, meanwhile, labored under the impression that the Seventh Amendment guarantee of a jury trial applied to Americans in the finance industry. In a 6-3 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court agreed. And Roberts' reasoning could have deep implications for other federal agencies as well, if taken to a natural conclusion:

In sum, the civil penalties in this case are designed to punish and deter, not to compensate. They are therefore “a type of remedy at common law that could only be enforced in courts of law.” Ibid. That conclusion effectively decides that this suit implicates the Seventh Amendment right, and that a defendant would be entitled to a jury on these claims. See id., at 421–423. ...

According to the SEC, these are actions under the “antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws” for “fraudulent conduct.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 72a–73a (opinion of the Commission). They provide civil penalties, a punitive remedy that we have recognized “could only be enforced in courts of law.” Tull, 481 U. S., at 422. And they target the same basic conduct as common law fraud, employ the same terms of art, and operate pursuant to similar legal principles. See supra, at 10–12. In short, this action involves a “matter[] of private rather than public right.” Granfinanciera, 492 U. S., at 56. Therefore, “Congress may not ‘withdraw’” it “‘from judicial cognizance.’” Stern, 564 U. S., at 484 (quoting Murray’s Lessee, 18 How., at 284). 

The SEC attempted to counter this argument by citing an OSHA precedent, Atlas Roofing, in which the court rejected the Seventh Amendment argument. But that was because the Occupational Safety and Hazard Act didn't incorporate common-law crimes as part of its enforcement. The regulations in OSHA are just that -- technical regulations, enforced by a set of technical regulators. Fraud is a common-law complaint, both in civil and criminal contexts, and therefore remains subject to the constitutional rights of those accused.

Roberts makes that plain in the conclusion of the governing opinion, while punting on other issues:

A defendant facing a fraud suit has the right to be tried by a jury of his peers before a neutral adjudicator. Rather than recognize that right, the dissent would permit Congress to concentrate the roles of prosecutor, judge, and jury in the hands of the Executive Branch. That is the very opposite of the separation of powers that the Constitution demands. Jarkesy and Patriot28 are entitled to a jury trial in an Article III court. We do not reach the remaining constitutional issues and affirm the ruling of the Fifth Circuit on the Seventh Amendment ground alone.

As Roberts scornfully notes, the dissenters led by Justice Sonia Sotomayor rallied around Atlas Roofing as a touchstone for their argument that this decision violates stare decisis. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas rebut that in a pointed concurrence by arguing that the 2010 expansion of SEC authority created this situation, and that all this decision does is return the SEC back to the status quo ante Dodd-Frank:

The dissent’s competing account of public rights is astonishing. On its telling, the Constitution might impose some (undescribed) limits on the power of the government to send cases “involving the liability of one individual to another” to executive tribunals for resolution. Post, at 22 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.). But, thanks to public rights doctrine, the dissent insists, the Constitution imposes no limits on the government’s power to seek civil penalties “outside the regular courts of law where there are no juries.” Post, at 2. In that field, the Constitution falls silent. The dissent does not even attempt to deploy any of the contrived balancing tests that emerged in Atlas Roofing’s aftermath to rein in the government’s power. But where in Article III, the Seventh Amendment, and due process can the dissent find this new rule? What about founding-era practice or original meaning? And why would a Constitution drawn up to protect against arbitrary government action make it easier for the government than for private parties to escape its dictates? The dissent offers no answers. ...

People like Mr. Jarkesy may be unpopular. Perhaps even rightly so: The acts he allegedly committed may warrant serious sanctions. But that should not obscure what is at stake in his case or others like it. While incursions on old rights may begin in cases against the  unpopular, they rarely end there. The authority the government seeks (and the dissent would award) in this case—to penalize citizens without a jury, without an independent judge, and under procedures foreign to our courts—certainly contains no such limits. That is why the Constitution built “high walls and clear distinctions” to safeguard individual liberty. Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U. S. 211, 239 (1995). Ones that ensure even the least popular among us has an independent judge and a jury of his peers resolve his case under procedures designed to ensure a fair trial in a fair forum. In reaffirming all this today, the Court hardly leaves the SEC without ample powers and recourse. The agency is free to pursue all of its charges against Mr. Jarkesy. And it is free to pursue them exactly as it had always done until 2010: In a court, before a judge, and with a jury.

Indeed. Consider why Democrats pushed Dodd-Frank in 2010 to understand what Gorsuch argues here. We had just come through the near-meltdown of the financial industry over the collapse of mortgage-backed securities that the federal government had incentivized through Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac to goose home sales to underqualified buyers. Washington politicians had a lot of incentives to demonize securities firms (and perhaps not unfairly, as Gorsuch says), and to set up mechanisms for vengeance upon them. This was designed to strip defendants of due-process rights to achieve "justice," at least in the eyes of politicians who certainly benefited from diverting attention away from their own policy choices.

The Supreme Court put an end to that at the SEC today. But this may impact other regulatory enforcement processes too. For those federal agencies pursuing in-house adjudication of charges that get mirrored in common law -- such as fraud -- Jarkesy may end up crippling those efforts as well. This decision will encourage more such Seventh Amendment challenges, and perhaps Fifth and Sixth Amendment challenges as well for those who read Gorsuch's concurrence carefully. (The process Jarkesy endured is a cross between Orwell and Dickens.) That will force the bureaucratic state to retreat from potential abuses and open their processes up to the scrutiny of juries, the kind of sunlight that tends to discourage authoritarian impulses. 

We didn't get Loper Bright and a final resolution on Chevron, but we did get a good step forward toward constitutional governance. 

Correction: I misspelled 'Loper' on the two occasions I referenced the case. I have fixed it now.