Thursday morning brought the first three decisions from the April argument session, with two of the three being unanimous. The first of those was Sripetch v SEC, which did just what the argument suggested it would, validate the SEC’s ability to use “disgorgement” to force a wrongdoer to turn over its profits to the government without showing harm caused to the wrongdoer’s customers.

Sripetch is a case for which context is crucial, as the case is the third in a closely related series of disputes considering the SEC’s use of disgorgement. This led Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for a unanimous court, to start his opinion with a lengthy summary of that context. As he sees it, “[t]he SEC’s disgorgement powers have a long and…