Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Sides with Government in Nondelegation Case

In Robinhood Financial LLC v. Secretary of Commonwealth, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court sided with the government and reversed a Suffolk County Superior Court decision in a high-stakes administrative law case. Robinhood had challenged the scope of the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s authority to enforce state securities law, and it was successful in the lower court. Overruling that decision, the Supreme Judicial Court offered a doctrinal tour of how one state—Massachusetts—deals with some of the most pressing issues in administrative law today: statutory interpretation, nondelegation, and preemption. Although it is grounded in an interpretation of state constitutional law, the court’s nondelegation analysis fleshes out a vision of the separation of powers that has kept the Article I nondelegation doctrine at bay for nearly a century at the U.S. Supreme Court.