SCOTUS To Hear Taser Maker’s Antitrust Suit With FTC

The justices took up an appeal by the company, which sells stun guns, body cameras and other equipment used by police, after a lower court threw out the case, finding that Axon cannot contest the constitutionality of the FTC’s structure in a federal court before first enduring the agency’s enforcement action in an in-house administrative proceeding.

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The FTC, an independent federal agency that targets anticompetitive and fraudulent business practices, can enforce its authority either in federal court or through its own administrative hearings.

Scottsdale, Arizona-based Axon contends that the agency is biased against the companies or individuals it targets and the results of its “sham” internal enforcement actions are preordained.

Axon claimed that the agency acts as “prosecutor, judge and jury” in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law. Axon also challenged the authority of any FTC administrative law judges, asserting that their job protections unlawfully place them outside the president’s power to control executive branch officers under the Constitution’s Article II.

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