Seventh Amendment

The couple attempted to sue Uber over the crash, citing the seventh amendment of the US Constitution, which grants people the right to a trial by jury.

And agencies have long had the authority to initially decide whether regulated entities have violated existing laws and regulations—but the court is considering whether this arrangement is unconstitutional in at least some situations because of the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch struggled with constitutional issues involved in having people lose property interests or the Seventh Amendment right to a trial without agreeing to it.

He raised three challenges: First, he argued that the SEC’s adjudication violated his Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial; second, that the administrative law judge’s independence violates the president’s executive authority; and third, that the SEC’s ability to decide where it would bring the case—within the agency or in federal court—violates the nondelegation doctrine.

As Kagan put it on Wednesday, quoting major precedent, the Seventh Amendment “is no bar to the creation of new rights or to their enforcement outside the regular courts of law.”