End delegation of the decision to initiate SEC enforcement cases

Research notes

Two objects: end the delegation of the decision to initiate an enforcement case, and have the Chairman (or GAO) study whether other delegations should be narrowed or sunset. The first was delivered by rule; the second was not.

• The operative text was read at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-03-14/html/2025-04064.htm. The Commission states it is “amending its delegations of authority to the Director to eliminate the delegation of authority to issue formal orders of investigation”, that formal orders “designate the enforcement staff authorized to issue subpoenas”, and that the change is “intended to increase effectiveness by more closely aligning the Commission’s use of its investigative resources with Commission priorities”. The 2009 delegation it withdraws (74 FR 40068) is named in the preamble.
• What this is not. The rule reaches the decision to open a formal investigation, not the decision to institute a contested enforcement action, which the Commission has always voted on itself. Read strictly, the Quote’s “decision to initiate an enforcement case” may mean the latter, in which case nothing happened at all. The reading here is that the formal order of investigation is the delegated decision the Mandate is describing — it is the only such delegation the Commission has ever made — and the alternative is recorded in the spot-check register.
• The study half, and the contrary movement. No GAO product on SEC delegations of authority was found, and the Commission’s active Unified Agenda (42 RINs, reginfo.gov, 2026) has no entry on delegation review or sunsetting. On 2026-07-20 the Commission adopted Modernization of Delegations of Authority to Commission Staff (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/07/20/2026-14540/modernization-of-delegations-of-authority-to-commission-staff, effective 2026-07-26), which rescinds delegations to the Director of the Division of Examinations and makes corresponding, wider delegations to the Director of the EDGAR Business Office and the Director of the Office of Municipal Securities. It narrows nothing and it sunsets nothing.
• Two later delegation rules point the same way: Delegation of Authority to the Director of the Division of Investment Management (2025-12-31) and Delegation of Authority To Grant or Deny Exemptions From Rule 612 of Regulation NMS (2026-01-16).
• The Chairman’s statements were read, and there are none on delegation (read-queue ticket 08, 2026-09-06). The earlier note said “sec.gov is 403 to curl with a browser User-Agent and to WebFetch, so any Chairman’s statement about delegation policy is unreadable”. That measured the wrong rung. sec.gov refuses a bare curl and a browser User-Agent and answers 200 with full content to the full Chrome header set. On that rung the Commission’s whole public voice for the window was enumerated: 581 items, being 216 speeches and statements plus 146 press releases for 2025 and 134 plus 85 for 2026 — the 350 statements ticket 07 enumerated, plus the 231 press releases — from sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements?year=&page= and sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases?year=&page=. Not one is about delegation of authority to Commission staff, in either direction. The two 2025 slugs matching “enforcement” are Acting Chairman Uyeda’s Sporkin-panel remarks of 2025-02-20, read in full and silent on delegation, and Commissioner Crenshaw’s four-sentence statement of 2025-02-28 in support of enforcement staff. So the negative on the study half is now bounded by an enumeration of the Commission’s own record rather than by a wall — and the answer is that no Chairman has said anything about narrowing or sunsetting delegations.
• The GAO half, bounded the same way. GAO’s SEC agency page — gao.gov/agencies/united-states-securities-exchange-commission, the non-obvious slug found by paging gao.gov/agencies?page=0…7 — lists eight products. The nearest to this ask is GAO-26-107823, Securities and Exchange Commission: Updating Assessments of Staff Procedures Could Improve Key Agency Operations (2026-03-27, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-107823), and it is not this ask: it is the triennial Dodd-Frank section 961 report on internal supervisory controls and on the procedures staff follow in examinations, investigations and filing reviews, and its six recommendations are about testing standards and documentation. It does not examine whether Commission delegations of authority to staff should be narrowed or sunset. No GAO product does.
• No February 2025 action. The premise that formal-order authority changed in February 2025 does not survive the Commission’s own record. The Commission Votes report for February 2025 (https://www.sec.gov/about/commission-votes/2025/commission-votes-2025-02.xml) lists 22 items and contains no delegation item; the March report carries Release 33-11366 at 2025-03-10; and the Federal Register document is signed “Dated: March 10, 2025” by the Secretary (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-03-14/html/2025-04064.htm). The action is dated 2025-03-10 and published 2025-03-14, and the event is dated from the publication under playbook §4.