USCA Case #25-5261 Document #2133109
Filed: 09/02/2025
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No. 25-5261
United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
September Term, 2025
228 (“not revisit[ing] Humphrey’s Executor”), with id. at 286 (Kagan, J., concurring in the judgment with respect to severability and dissenting in part) (noting that the Federal Trade Commission, along with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, “can issue regulations, conduct its own adjudications, and bring civil enforcement actions in court all backed by the threat of penalties”); compare Collins, 594 U.S. 220, 250-251 (2021) (recognizing that Seila Law did “not revisit () prior decisions”) (quoting Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 204), with id. at 285 (Sotomayor, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (noting that the Federal Housing Finance Agency may initiate administrative proceedings, issue subpoenas, and impose monetary penalties); see generally Free Enter. Fund, 561 U.S. at 483 (in case involving multimember board, declining to “reexamine” Humphrey’s Executor).
Those repeated decisions of the Supreme Court to preserve Humphrey’s Executor with full knowledge of the executive powers exercised by the Commission—the same ones relied on by the government here as purported grounds for discarding precedent-control this court’s decisionmaking. For when a precedent of the Supreme Court “has direct application in a case,” as Humphrey’s Executor does here, “the Court of Appeals should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to [the Supreme] Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.” Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 484 (1989). A lower court is bound by that rule “even if the lower court thinks the precedent is in tension with ‘some other line of decisions”” or that “intervening decisions from [the Supreme] Court 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 also Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 237 (1997) (“We do not acknowledge, and we do not hold, that other courts should conclude our more recent cases have, by implication, overruled an earlier precedent.”).
The Fifth Circuit has faithfully hewed to this rule with respect to the very precedent at issue here-Humphrey’s Executor. Illumina, Inc. v. Federal Trade Comm’n, 88 F.4th 1036, 1047 (5th Cir. 2023) (“[A]lthough the FTC’s powers may have changed since Humphrey’s Executor was decided, the question of whether the FTC’s authority has changed so fundamentally as to render Humphrey’s Executor no longer binding is for the Supreme Court, not us, to answer.”). This court likewise has repeatedly acknowledged that its role is to apply Supreme Court precedent, not to declare its overruling. See National Security Archive v. CIA, 104 F.4th 267, 272 n.1 (D.C. Cir. 2024) (“This Court is charged with following case law that directly controls a particular issue[.]”); Shea v. Kerry, 796 F.3d 42, 54 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (quoting Agostini, 521 U.S. at 237); Sierra Club v. EPA, 322 F.3d 718, 725 (D.C. Cir. 2003) (quoting
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