Hello, this is Jeff Barnum reading the Supreme Court decision in Darren K. Margolin, Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review versus National Association of Immigration Judges on petition for writ of sorcery to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, decided May 26, 2026. Percurium After the Executive Office for Immigration Review adopted a policy regulating immigration judges work-related speech, an association of such judges, respondent here, challenged the policy in federal district court. The district court held that the respondents' challenge must proceed through the administrative review scheme established by the Civil Service Reform Act. But the Fourth Circuit vacated and remanded based on an issue that the parties had not raised. That decision violated the principle of party presentation, and we reverse. The Executive Office for Immigration Review sets policies governing immigration courts. In October 2021, it implemented a rule requiring immigration judges to obtain supervisory approval for public speeches relating to their official duties. The policy was meant to ensure that employee speech, which may be seen as bearing the imprimitor of the office, is consistent with its official positions. Respondent challenged the policy in the Eastern District of Virginia, asserting violations of its members' First and Fifth Amendment rights. This court has held that under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, or CSRA, Congress intended federal employees to bring most work-related grievances to the Merit Systems Protection Board, or MSPB, and the Special Counsel, not to Federal District Court. Respondent thus accepted that the CSRA channels judicial review of challenges to covered employment actions to the MSPB. It argued only that its members' constitutional claims were not the kind of work-related claims that Congress intended to steer out of district court. The district court dismissed respondents' claims. The court, like respondent, acknowledged that Congress intended to preclude district court jurisdiction over covered actions brought by federal employees, and it held that respondents' claims were indeed covered by the CSRA. Respondent appealed. It did not dispute that the CSRA provides the exclusive avenue for review of certain employment-related claims. It again argued only that its specific claims were not covered under the CSRA's claim channeling scheme. The Fourth Circuit vacated and remanded. Like the District Court, it held that respondents' claims were covered by the CSRA, and the court recognized our precedent holding that Congress designed the CSRA to divest district courts of jurisdiction to review legal challenges like respondents. Nonetheless, it held that factual circumstances had called into question whether the CSRA was functioning as Congress intended. Specifically, the court believed that legal challenges to the tenure protection afforded MSPB members and the special counsel and the MSPB's lack of a quorum may require a new examination of congressional intent to channel covered claims out of district court. The court thus remanded for fact-finding into the current operation of the MSPB. The Court of Appeals denied rehearing on Banque. Judge Quadlbaum, joined by three judges, dissented. He criticized the panel for shirking party presentation principles by deciding the case on a novel ground without any party raising the issue and without requesting supplemental briefing. Federal courts adhere to the principle of party presentation. See Clark v. Sweeney, 607 U.S. 7, a Supreme Court Procurium Decision from 2025. That principle, the rule that points not argued will not be considered, distinguishes our adversarial system of justice from an inquisitorial one. Because courts are essentially passive instruments of government, we rely on the parties to frame the issues for decision and decide only the questions presented. We recently reversed the Fourth Circuit for violating this party presentation principle. In Clark, a state prisoner seeking federal habeas relief argued that his trial counsel was ineffective for failing to investigate whether the entire jury had been tainted by one juror's unauthorized crime scene visit. The district court denied relief, but the Fourth Circuit reversed and granted a new trial. It did so based not on the prisoner's ineffective assistance claim, but instead on a combination of extraordinary failures from juror to judge to attorney that deprived the prisoner of his confrontation and impartial jury rights. We summarily reversed, by granting relief based on a claim that the prisoner never asserted and that the state never had the chance to address, the Fourth Circuit transgressed the party presentation principle. So too here, the Fourth Circuit violated the party presentation principle when it decided a case different from the one the respondent advanced. As respondent conceded below, our precedent establishes that Congress, through the CSRA, intended to channel covered claims to the MSPB. The parties thus confined their arguments to the narrow question whether respondents' claims were in fact covered. Unsatisfied with rejecting respondents' arguments on that question, however, the Fourth Circuit Suisponte addressed a much broader one and remanded for further proceedings on that question. The court transformed respondents' arguments that the CSRA did not channel its claims into one that the CRSA might not, in light of current conditions, channel any claims. And the court did so without giving either side a chance to address its theory. That drastic departure from the principle of party presentation constituted an abuse of discretion. Federal courts are not roving commissions licensed to sally forth each day looking for wrongs to write. The Court of Appeals lost sight of those principles here. The petition for a writ of surgery is granted, the judgment of the Fourth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Justice Thomas filed a concurring opinion in which Justice Barrett joined. Thank you for listening. Please help us by rating and reviewing this podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and make sure you subscribe so you can get all of the OT twenty five decisions automatically delivered to your device. If you wish to communicate with the podcast, please email us at Scotusdecisions at gmail.com or click the link in the show notes. Thanks and have a great day.