The Supreme Court just made it much harder to go after financial fraud

• The Supreme Court stripped out some of the SEC's financial fraud enforcement powers.
• It ruled that defendants in those cases have a right to a jury trial.
• Critics say the court is seizing power from federal agencies and making it harder to enforce fraud laws.

The Supreme Court dealt a blow to the US Securities and Exchange Commission in a ruling Thursday, sharply limiting the way it pursued financial fraud cases.

Until today, the SEC had two ways of pursuing fraud cases. It could sue in federal district court. Or it could bring an "administrative proceeding" in its own in-house court, where it appoints its own judges and the cases have no juries.