Mark Cuban knows how to hold a grudge.

It's been six years since a Texas jury cleared the celebrity billionaire of insider trading charges, but that hasn't stopped Cuban from taking what seems like every opportunity available to publicly kick the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Cuban's name popped up this week on yet another anti-SEC amicus brief, this one filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit by a team from Paul Hastings.

“As an individual who achieved exoneration before a jury, Mr. Cuban has an interest in supporting appellant's appeal in this case and in ensuring that future litigants are not forced into administrative proceedings that both favor the SEC and infringe on individuals' constitutional rights,” states the brief by Samuel Cooper, Nicolas Morgan, Janice Lee, Brian Kaewert and Joseph Montoya.

The underlying case involves auditor Michelle Cochran. In 2016, the SEC in an administrative proceeding alleged that she failed to follow various accounting standards in violation of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

But then, lo and behold! While her case was pending, the U.S. Supreme Court in Lucia v. SEC ruled that the agency's administrative law judges were unconstitutionally appointed in violation of Article II.

Turns out, it wasn't a get-out-of-jail-free card. The SEC in an attempt to salvage its administrative docket re-assigned all pending enforcement cases to new ALJs that it claims are properly installed.

Cochran's lawyers disagree.

“The reinstituted proceeding against Ms. Cochran is just as unconstitutional as the original proceeding, however—and the SEC knows it,” wrote Steven Simpson and Margaret Little of the New Civil Liberties Alliance and Dallas solo practitioner Karen Cook. “Whereas Ms. Cochran's first ALJ was not constitutionally appointed, her second ALJ presides over matters in violation of the president's removal power.”

That is, the ALJs are “protected from removal by several layers of tenure protection, which insulate them from control by the president in violation of Article II.”

So….that actually strikes me as a good thing, if we want judges who are independent and fair-minded. How is justice better served by putting them under the president's direct control?

But the current challenge (and others like it) seem animated less by a passion to protect the hallowed integrity of the Appointments Clause, and more as a way to take aim at the administrative law process as a whole.

Admittedly, it's not such a hot forum for defendants. A few years ago, I did an analysis of administrative cases and found the SEC almost never loses on its home court. We're talking 200-plus wins in a row.

Cochran wants her case moved to an Article III court, where the SEC on a semi-regular basis gets spanked, but she lost the first round in the Northern District of Texas.

Cue the amicus briefs.

“Unlike defendants in federal court proceedings, respondents in SEC administrative proceedings are not afforded the right to a jury trial or the benefits and protections of the federal rules of evidence and procedure,” the Paul Hastings team wrote. “Such proceedings disregard the protections guaranteed to litigants by the United States Constitution, and lead to unequal and unjust results.”

The moving force behind the brief was actually hedge fund manager Phillip Goldstein. He's tangled with the SEC before, successfully challenging the agency's regulation of private investment funds.

Goldstein hired the Paul Hastings team, who then reached out to Cuban and hedge fund manager Nelson Obus—also found not guilty by a jury of insider trading—to sign on as well.

“As we have seen in recent Supreme Court cases like Lucia, Kokesh, and Digital Realty, simply because the SEC has operated in a certain way for decades does not make its practices constitutional,” said Nicholas Morgan of Paul Hastings. “On the constitutional jury right issue that brought Messrs. Cuban, Obus, and Goldstein together to support Ms. Cochran, the commission should not wait for the Supreme Court to weigh in.  It is within the SEC's authority to correct this issue now, and it should do so.”

The case has attracted other amicus interest as well.  A team from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher filed a brief on behalf of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Ashley Charles Parrish of King & Spalding weighed in on behalf of the Cato Institute, Cause of Action Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.