Mark Cuban Responds to New Supreme Court Decision

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban celebrates after a 124-103 victory against the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game Five of the Western Conference Finals at Target Center on May 30, 2024 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Cuban has applauded a recent Supreme Court decision on securities fraud.

Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks known widely from ABC's Shark Tank, applauded the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy.

"It only took 9 years, but TBH, the SEC will always try every way it can to put its finger on the scale of justice," Cuban wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The court ruled Thursday that those accused of securities fraud have a right to a fair jury trial. The decision appeared personal to Cuban, who was cleared of insider trading charges pushed by the SEC in 2013. Since then, Cuban has submitted several amicus briefs on his views on what the SEC can do better as an agency.

Now, under SEC v. Jarkesy, the SEC will be required to offer a defendant a jury trial when pursuing civil penalties for securities fraud.

George Jarkesy, a hedge fund leader, had fraud charges issued against him by the SEC, specifically under an administrative law judge, but Jarkesy appealed based on the notion he had a right to a fair jury trial.

The Supreme Court agreed.

"A defendant facing a fraud suit has the right to be tried by a jury of his peers before a neutral adjudicator," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the ruling.

While the court delivered the decision as a majority, Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson filed dissenting opinions against the ruling.

"In the past, some decisions by the SEC to go after individuals suspected of financial wrongdoing have been questioned for both how the organization pursues them and what legally they should be allowed to do and not to do," Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor at the University of Tennessee at Martin, told Newsweek. "This rule makes it clear in situations involving potential securities fraud that those accused are entitled to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment."

Beene said that in many ways, the SEC v. Jarkesy decision is not a win or loss but rather clarifying for fraud defendants moving forward.

"Those accused now know they'll get a fair hearing, but they're still going to have to go through that process," Beene said. "Likewise, the SEC can still pursue individuals, but the process just got more complicated."

The decision could be seen as a blow to the administrative state at a larger scale, however, because other federal agencies, like the EPA and Labor Department, also have administrative law judges.

Under the ruling, judges will have more limited power to enforce laws under the assumption of public interest. Previously, the SEC and other federal agencies could decide a case with just an administrative law judge. But now they must have a court jury if pursuing civil charges.

"The constitutionality of hundreds of statutes may now be in peril, and dozens of agencies could be stripped of their power to enforce laws enacted by Congress," Sotomayor wrote in her dissenting opinion.

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