June 26, 2018
After the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission increasingly began to rely on internal administrative proceedings in lieu of filing federal court cases for securities fraud violations. This allowed the agency to avoid a sometimes rigorous federal court system and retain what some believed was an unnecessary “home court” advantage by trying cases before an administrative law judge appointed by SEC staff that litigated before it. The Supreme Court’s opinion issued last week in Lucia v. SEC – a case in which the government’s position flipped with the change of administrations – calls into question the validity of reliance by the SEC, and perhaps other federal agencies, on ALJs. [...]