On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court
decided SEC v. Jarkesy which held that, pursuant to the Seventh Amendment, when the SEC brings an enforcement action seeking civil penalties, it must do so in federal court, where a jury trial is available, rather than through its own in-house proceedings. When the SEC would adjudicate a matter in-house, however, there were no juries — the Commission (or a delegated member or Administrative Law Judge) presided over the action and acts as the factfinder.
In the underlying case (covered by InfoBytes here), the SEC initiated an enforcement action and sought, among other remedies, civil penalties. The SEC, as was typical, adjudicated the matter in-house rather than proceed in federal court and imposed a $300,000 civil penalty. The defendant sought review, ultimately raising before the Supreme Court the question of whether the Seventh Amendment entitled a defendant to a jury trial when the SEC seeks civil penalties for securities fraud. The Supreme Court held that it did as the Seventh Amendment guaranteed that “the right of trial by jury shall be preserved” in “suits at common law”; “money damages are the prototypical common law remedy,” and civil penalties — a form of monetary relief — were “a type of remedy at common law that could only be enforced in courts of law.”
