High Court Urged to Allow SEC Judge Challenges in District Court

People challenging the constitutionality of the SEC’s in-house judges should be able to go straight to federal district court without completing an internal agency review process first, a CPA told the US Supreme Court.

Michelle Cochran in her Thursday opening brief asked the high court to affirm an appellate decision in her favor, where the en banc US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that federal district courts have jurisdiction to hear structural constitutional challenges to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s administrative law judges.

She is opposing the commission’s effort to persuade the justices to reverse the appellate ...