USCA Case #25-5261 Doc #2133109
Filed: 09/02/2025
Web page 9 of 29
No. 25-5261
United States Court docket of Appeals
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
September Time period, 2025
228 (“not revisit[ing] Humphrey’s Executor”), with id. at 286 (Kagan, J., concurring within the judgment with respect to severability and dissenting partly) (noting that the Federal Commerce Fee, together with the Client Monetary Safety Bureau, “can concern laws, conduct its personal adjudications, and produce civil enforcement actions in courtroom all backed by the specter of penalties”); examine Collins, 594 U.S. 220, 250-251 (2021) (recognizing that Seila Regulation did “not revisit () prior selections”) (quoting Seila Regulation, 591 U.S. at 204), with id. at 285 (Sotomayor, J., concurring partly and dissenting partly) (noting that the Federal Housing Finance Company could provoke administrative proceedings, concern subpoenas, and impose financial penalties); see usually Free Enter. Fund, 561 U.S. at 483 (in case involving multimember board, declining to “reexamine” Humphrey’s Executor).
These repeated selections of the Supreme Court docket to protect Humphrey’s Executor with full information of the manager powers exercised by the Fee—the identical ones relied on by the federal government right here as purported grounds for discarding precedent-control this courtroom’s decisionmaking. For when a precedent of the Supreme Court docket “has direct software in a case,” as Humphrey’s Executor does right here, “the Court docket of Appeals ought to comply with the case which instantly controls, leaving to [the Supreme] Court docket the prerogative of overruling its personal selections.” Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Categorical, Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 484 (1989). A decrease courtroom is sure by that rule “even when the decrease courtroom thinks the precedent is in pressure with ‘another line of choices”” or that “intervening selections from [the Supreme] Court docket had ‘implicitly overruled’ [the precedent.]” Mallory v. Norfolk S. Ry. Co., 600 U.S. 122, 136 (2023) (quoting Rodriguez de Quijas, 490 U.S. at 484); see additionally Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 237 (1997) (“We don’t acknowledge, and we don’t maintain, that different courts ought to conclude our more moderen instances have, by implication, overruled an earlier precedent.”).
The Fifth Circuit has faithfully hewed to this rule with respect to the very precedent at concern here-Humphrey’s Executor. Illumina, Inc. v. Federal Commerce Comm’n, 88 F.4th 1036, 1047 (fifth Cir. 2023) (“[A]lthough the FTC’s powers could have modified since Humphrey’s Executor was determined, the query of whether or not the FTC’s authority has modified so basically as to render Humphrey’s Executor not binding is for the Supreme Court docket, not us, to reply.”). This courtroom likewise has repeatedly acknowledged that its function is to use Supreme Court docket precedent, to not declare its overruling. See Nationwide Safety Archive v. CIA, 104 F.4th 267, 272 n.1 (D.C. Cir. 2024) (“This Court docket is charged with following case legislation that instantly controls a selected concern[.]”); Shea v. Kerry, 796 F.3d 42, 54 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (quoting Agostini, 521 U.S. at 237); Sierra Membership v. EPA, 322 F.3d 718, 725 (D.C. Cir. 2003) (quoting
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