For more than 20 years, Elliot Goldberg has worked as a Pennsylvania financial adviser. He later branched out through a handful of companies he ran himself that helped provide capital to small businesses.
In June 2021, despite the lack of any consumer complaint or loss, the Department of Banking and Securities opened an enforcement action against him, alleging violations of the Pennsylvania Securities Act of 1972 tied to the sale of certain promissory notes and a referral fee he earned connecting a few Pennsylvanians to an outside investment fund.
Rather than filing suit in an independent court, the Department brought its case before its own in-house hearing officer. After a two-day administrative trial in December 2022, the hearing officer sided with the Department’s enforcement staff and recommended a $931,000 penalty. By law, even if the Department had established investor or consumer loss (it didn’t allege any such loss), this fine would still go to the Department to pay its staff’s salaries and otherwise fund the Department’s operations. Goldberg’s only avenue to challenge that finding was to appeal to the Department itself—which, unsurprisingly, sided with its own hearing officer.
Goldberg then appealed to the Commonwealth Court, arguing the Department’s in-house process violated his right to a jury trial under the Pennsylvania and U.S. Constitutions. The Commonwealth Court sided with the Department, arguing that because the 1972 Act didn’t exist at the time Pennsylvania adopted its constitution, no jury right applied. Goldberg, with the help of Pacific Legal Foundation and attorney William Uchimoto, then petitioned the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
Pennsylvania’s constitution promises that the right to a jury trial “shall…remain inviolate.” In 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a similar challenge brought under the federal constitution. In SEC v. Jarkesy, the Court held that the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires a jury trial when the federal government seeks civil penalties for securities fraud, rather than letting an agency investigate, prosecute, and judge its own case. Goldberg’s petition asks the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to accord Pennsylvanians the same right under the Pennsylvania Constitution.
On July 1, 2026, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted Goldberg’s petition for allowance of appeal. The court will now decide whether Pennsylvanians facing severe financial punishment from a state agency are entitled to make their case to a jury, rather than to the same agency that accused them. PLF and Goldberg are prepared to take the Seventh Amendment question to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.
What’s At Stake?
- When the government seeks to impose substantial civil penalties for alleged fraud, the Pennsylvania and U.S. Constitutions protect the right to defend oneself in a court of law before a jury.
- The Constitution forbids the government from serving as prosecutor, judge, and jury in its own cases. When a single agency investigates, charges, and decides the outcome, the accused loses his right to a jury trial.
- The Seventh Amendment’s jury trial guarantee has never been applied to the states. Courts should incorporate that protection so every American—regardless of where they live—can demand that the government prove its case in front of a jury before it can punish citizens.
