NCLA to SCOTUS: Restore Right to Court Adjudication in Regulatory Cases, Toss “Public Rights” Exception

Department of Labor, et al. v. Sun Valley Orchards, LLC

Washington, D.C., Aug. 03, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Congress, without the authority to do so, purportedly gave the U.S. Department of Labor the judicial power to adjudicate a variety of enforcement cases against companies. Today, the New Civil Liberties Alliance filed an amicus curiae brief alongside Americans for Prosperity Foundation and The Buckeye Institute in Department of Labor v. Sun Valley Orchards urging the Supreme Court to find that this arrangement is unconstitutional. The Justices should rule that regulatory enforcement cases must be adjudicated by Article III courts.

Article III of the Constitution vests judicial power exclusively in Article III courts. Congress does not possess judicial power, so it cannot relocate or “delegate” that power to the Department of Labor or anywhere else outside of the Judicial Branch. But the Supreme Court wrongly held in Atlas Roofing v. OSHRC in 1977 that Congress did not violate Americans’ Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial in Article III court by giving an agency the power to adjudicate cases involving “public rights,” including punitive law-enforcement proceedings supposedly prosecuted in the public interest. The Court has not clearly explained what a “public right” is in the decades since, and the government does not have “rights” when it interacts with people, only powers given to it by the Constitution.

In 2024, the Court recognized in SEC v. Jarkesy that the “public rights” exception to Article III court jurisdiction “has no textual basis in the Constitution.” NCLA asks the Court to overturn Atlas Roofing and throw out the “public rights” exception as antithetical to our founding document.

NCLA released the following statements:
“The Court should clarify that nothing remains of its bewildering ‘public rights’ exception to Article III jurisdiction. In the process it should also explicitly overrule its dreadful Atlas Roofing decision.”
— Russ Ryan, Senior Litigation Counsel, NCLA

“The Supreme Court’s Jarkesy case went a good way toward jettisoning the court-created ‘public rights’ exception to Article III jurisdiction. Now, it should go the rest of the way. There is no basis for it in the text of the Constitution, so Atlas Roofing should be on the chopping block.”
— Mark Chenoweth, President and CLO, NCLA

For more information visit the amicus page here.

ABOUT NCLA
NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State. NCLA’s public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans’ fundamental rights.

Joe Martyak
New Civil Liberties Alliance
703-403-1111
joe.martyak@ncla.legal

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