Does 15 U.S.C. § 78u(d)(5) and its authorization for the Commission to seek 'equitable relief' allow the Commission and a district court to order seizure of every company owned by a defendant that benefitted to the slightest degree from the proceeds of his allegedly illegal acts—and thereby deprive the defendant of the resources to defend himself in a parallel criminal trial and raise serious constitutional questions?

The United States Government brought parallel crim-inal and civil enforcement actions against Petitioner Tim-othy Barton, alleging violations of the securities laws with respect to certain loans for real-estate development pro-jects. The Securities and Exchange Commission brought the civil action, and it sought and obtained the seizure and placement into a receivership of every entity directly or indirectly controlled by Mr. Barton. That amounted to seizing all Mr. Barton’s assets and left him with no re-sources to defend against the Government. The Fifth Circuit reversed. On remand, the district court reimposed a receivership of similar scope, holding that Mr. Barton’s entire companies and their assets could be seized if they benefitted in any way or to the slightest degree from the proceeds of the disputed loans. A second, differently constituted panel of the Fifth Circuit affirmed and rejected any “proportionality limitation” on the bene-fit to a company from subject property before the Govern-ment could seize all its assets. App. 17a. The Constitution restricts the Government from seiz-ing assets prior to judgment that a defendant needs to pay his defense lawyers. See, e.g., Luis v. United States, 578 U.S. 5 (2016). The Fifth Circuit’s infinitely flexible rule raises serious constitutional questions. Even when ad-dressing congressional commands to seize property , this Court has never allowed seizure of whole companies for receiving even the smallest benefit from subject property. And this Court has not allowed agencies or courts invok-ing general equitable authority to come close to constitu-tional limits. The question presented is: Does 15 U.S.C. § 78u(d)(5) and its authorization (ii) for the Commission to seek “equitable relief ” allow the Commission and a district court to use that general equitable authority to order a every company owned by a defendant that benefitted to the slightest de-gree from the proceeds of his allegedly illegal acts—and thereby deprive the defendant of the resources to defend himself in a parallel crimi-nal trial and raise serious constitutional ques-tions? (iii)