CNN brought on former Jan. 6 committee lawyer Temidayo Aganga-Williams to lament that a Supreme Court case could damage that administrative deep state.
The Supreme Court began hearing arguments Wednesday in a case regarding the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) ability to enforce certain investment laws in a case that could strip federal agencies of their power. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2022 that the SEC’s proceedings violate the Seventh Amendment’s right to a jury trial and infringe on congressional and presidential powers.
Aganga-Williams, who was former senior investigative counsel on the Jan. 6th Select Committee, said the case has “potentially massive implications to what we call the administrative state.”
“When you think of agencies that make rules and regulations, that govern the environment, that govern the stock market, all of those are administrative agencies. And what this case is challenging is whether or not Congress can delegate authority to those states who do what they do, which is decide rules and regulations on all kinds of aspects of the economy. So what is dangerous here, is that there has been a multi-decade effort, frankly on the conservative right led by, for example, the Federalist Society to undermine the administrative state, to say that Congress cannot delegate authority to those agencies,” Aganga-Williams said.
“The danger is if the court were to find that that delegation was impermissible, those agencies lose a lot of power. For example, the s.E.c. won’t be able to regulate the stock market in the current fashion it can. For example the EPA may not be able to regulate the environmental issues the way it currently can. And what happens is that it then relies on Congress to basically pass laws about every single thing and we know Congress is deadlocked. So if Congress isn’t passing additional laws… and if the Supreme Court says that these agencies are — have impermissible use of power and can’t act, you’re gonna have a stalemate here where potentially large swaths of our economy aren’t being regulated because no one can act and that’s a real danger here.”
Congress empowered the SEC to use its own in-house administrative law judges to try cases brought by agency enforcement when the Dodd-Frank Act was passed following the 2008 financial crisis. George R. Jarkesy challenged the grant of powers as unconstitutional after he was charged in the SEC’s administrative proceedings after he was charged with fraud relating to investment activities in 2013.
The Supreme Court ruled in April that individuals facing complaints from the SEC and the Federal Trade Commission can bring constitutional challenges directly in federal court rather than going through the agency’s administrative proceedings.
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