The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Cato Institute, and Competitive Enterprise Institute together asked the Supreme Court to take up a case that could place additional checks on the SEC’s use of in-house enforcement proceedings. In a joint October 5, 2020, amicus brief, the groups accused the commission of “seeking to barricade the courthouse doors in this case.”
The petition in Gibson v. SEC represents the latest effort to chip away at the SEC’s authority to bring charges of securities fraud and other violations before its administrative law judges (ALJs) instead of in federal court, coming two years after the Supreme Court upended the commission’s administrative proceedings in Lucia v. SEC.