Washington, D.C., Aug. 11, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The National Credit Union Administration assessed $5 million in restitution and penalties against former Texas credit union CEO Jeffrey Moats and sought to prohibit him from working at any insured depository institution. Despite demanding such exorbitant penalties, the NCUA does not use juries in prosecuting and judging cases like Mr. Moats’s. Instead, its three-member Board of Directors makes the final decision on liability and penalties after in-house adjudication before NCUA’s in-house tribunal overseen by Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) it appoints, relying on their findings of fact.
This scheme violates the Seventh Amendment right to be tried before a jury, rather than a government bureaucrat, and the right to be tried in an Article III court. The New Civil Liberties Alliance has filed an amicus curiae brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Moats v. NCUA and rule that a federal district court had jurisdiction to hear Mr. Moats’s case against the constitutionality of NCUA’s structure.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas dismissed Mr. Moats’s challenge to the NCUA’s actions against him, ruling that Section 1786(k)(1) of Title 12, passed by Congress, expressly strips federal courts of jurisdiction to hear his constitutional claims. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld that error. But Article III and the Seventh Amendment do not just protect the jury trial right; they also directly limit Congress’s power to relocate the judicial power of the United States from courts to administrative tribunals. Congress lacks Article III judicial power in the first place, so it cannot “delegate” that power to agencies or get around the Seventh Amendment by taking away courts’ jurisdiction over cases like this one brought by Mr. Moats.
The Supreme Court’s decisions in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, NCLA’s Securities and Exchange Commission v. Cochran case, and SEC v. Jarkesy mean the district court had jurisdiction to hear cases of this kind. Those rulings correctly held that courts—not bureaucrats—have the job of adjudicating cases that challenge the constitutionality of government agencies’ structures.
NCLA released the following statements:
“The Court should take this case and make clear—again—that private citizens like Mr. Moats have a right to seek judicial relief from unconstitutional agency adjudication before having to endure that endless and wholly illegal process. Forcing litigants to wait until the entire administrative process is over makes their here-and-now constitutional injury permanent and irremediable.”
— Russ Ryan, Senior Litigation Counsel, NCLA
“The Constitution reserves the judicial power of the United States exclusively for federal courts to exercise. Congress has no judicial power, so it cannot delegate judicial power to executive branch agencies. That means even if Congress has explicitly tried to confer judicial power on executive agency officials, it cannot do so.”
— Mark Chenoweth, President, NCLA
For more information visit the amicus page here.
ABOUT NCLA
NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State. NCLA’s public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans’ fundamental rights.
Joe Martyak New Civil Liberties Alliance 703-403-1111 joe.martyak@ncla.legal