SCOTUS just restored us to Yellow Dog contract days!

I’ll be glad to be shown otherwise, but I’m pretty sure the recent SCOTUS decision just invalidated the Norris-LaGuardia Act and restored us to the 1920s norm of allowing employers to dictate when people can and cannot exercise their free association rights.

This is not a good decision for America.

The new guy wrote the majority decision:

RBG wrote for the dissent, natch.

Seems like Gorsuch is arguing the law, and Ginsberg is arguing what the policy should be. Since it isn’t the job of the Supreme Court to change laws or set policy, Gorsuch is right and Ginsberg is wrong.

But we could have guessed that.

Regards,
Shodan

Yet many of the cases SCOTUS rules on affirms, modifies or nullifies a law or statute. So it really is their job.

What governmental department oversees whether such arbitration follows regs, and who is currently heading that department?

You’ve got the principle right but the outcome reversed. It was Gorsuch and his conservative peers who just rewrote a bunch of laws they don’t like. Ginsberg was arguing that the laws should have remained intact.

This was pure judicial activism; conservatives on the Supreme Court writing laws.

Well, you could have maybe, since it seems that you read the part of what Gorsuch wrote that I quoted and just said “well, it must be true”.

That’s my immediate perception, too, Little Nemo: they just erased a good portion of Norris-LaGuardia.

I have the outcome correct. Ginsberg made no mention of retaining laws, she argued (in the quoted text) only policy grounds. Gorsuch said

Regards,
Shodan

No, no, no! Only liberal judges can practice judicial activism! Haven’t you been paying attention the last thirty years? :rolleyes:

“Yellow dog” contracts prevented an employee from joining a union. The court decision specifically says that it does not address that at all. It merely returns the interpretation of the Arbitration Act to the interpretation that prevailed from 1926-2012. It is an obviously correct opinion.

Call me crazy, but I can’t decide what is going on from that brief article and I’d have to see the actual decision. Does anyone have a link to the text of the decision? My quick google search didn’t find it.

Here’s the opinion.

I think this is it. PDF.

Regards,
Shodan

Great. Thanks.

As usual, it’s pretty dense. My 5 minute perusal didn’t help much. Might need one of our resident lawyers to help decode the reasoning.

"The outcome does NOT affect people represented by labor unions, but an estimated 25 million employees work under contracts that prohibit collective action by employees who want to raise claims about some aspect of their employment."
…"The court’s task was to RECONCILE (existing) federal laws that seemed to point in different directions. On the one hand, New Deal labor laws explicitly gave workers the right to band together. On the other, the older Federal Arbitration Act encourages the use of arbitration, instead of the courts."
…"Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said THE CONTRACTS ARE VALID under the (existing) arbitration law. “As a matter of policy these questions are surely debatable. But as a matter of law the answer is clear,” Gorsuch wrote."
…“Lower courts had split over the issue. The high court considered three cases — two in which appeals courts ruled that such agreements can’t be enforced and a third in which the appeals court said they are valid.”
If Congress wishes to change existing laws they are free to do so. Based on existing laws, lower courts issued split decisions over this issue. That resulted in the Supremes accepting these cases and issuing their own opinions. Contracts were written, offered, and accepted. The parties originally accepted the fact that business disputes will be settled in arbitration and not the courts. It now appears that at least three employees objected to the wording of the contracts and took the issue to court. And they lost.

Ditzy ol’ Ginsburg suggests that federal and state stautes may now, possibly, be under-enforced at some time in the future. Maybe. Unless, of course, they aren’t. It seems to me that Ginsburg wishes to rewrite the contracts for 25 million employees.

I’m not a lawyer, but my high level understanding is that the petitioners contended that the FAA and NRLB were in conflict. The NRLB was passed after the FAA, so the employees that were party to the suit argued the NRLB superseded the FAA, and they shouldn’t be required to go into individual arbitration since that violated section 7 of the NRLB, even though they agreed to arbitration as a condition of employment.

The majority opinion held that there is no conflict between the two acts and both are operative. Folks can unionize and collectively bargain, and employers could require arbitration as a condition of employment:

The conflict in this matter seems to hinge on a narrow or expansive reading of the terms in the NRLB, of which there has been conflict even in the last 10 years withing the NRLB positions. I think SCOTUSBlog summaries are superior to most other summaries. Here is theirs for this case.

Let’s assume for a moment that your interpretation is correct in this case. I assume “we could have guessed that” would be a reference to how the court’s conservative faction always exercises commendable judicial restraint and respect for the rule of law.

If only. The reality is that so far the Roberts court has been one of the most activist in memory, not the least bit hesitant to reshape policy in order to mold society in the conservative image, and in the process overturning with reckless abandon any laws that get in the way. In Citizens United Roberts cleverly conspired to have the case re-argued in order to greatly broaden its scope, and in the process not only overturned parts of important campaign finance legislation that had bipartisan support, but overruled two previous Supreme Court rulings that had supported it.

It was some of the most brazen activism that had ever transpired in the court, although the Heller ruling two years earlier was equally brazen. The Supreme Court had managed for a century to avoid being drawn into making interpretations of the Second Amendment, but the Roberts court had no such qualms. It seems that Scalia had a brilliant insight that had escaped all previous observers, which is that the introductory words to the Amendment, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state …” could be ignored, because the Second Amendment had nothing whatsoever to do with militias or a free state, and those words were just decoration. This was of course ludicrous, but the NRA loved it, so it was all good.

The point I’m making here is that whenever the conservatives on the Roberts court suddenly develop a deep respect for the rule of law, or constitutional literalism, or a great reluctance to become involved in “policy”, look carefully and you’ll see a conservative policy being advanced. It’s only when progressive laws are being challenged that they’ll run over them like a bulldozer.

It seems to me that the larger issue (“policy” seems an inadequate description) is the conflict between the ideals of democracy and the reality of modern capitalism/ industrialism. The left’s ideological stance since the 1930’s has been that the interests of the people need protection against what would otherwise be the overwhelming power of plutocracy; that strict laissez faire would lead to a modern version of serfdom. Thus you have not only labor laws but also things like campaign donation laws. This is I think one of the major unresolved issues of our society.

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The entire U.S. Bill of Rights was created, written, debated, passed, and ratified to protect certain unalienable rights of individuals (aka THE PEOPLE). The entire BOR protects an individual’s right from the power of the government.

The founding fathers did not create a list of nine rights for THE PEOPLE, and one right for the government or any militia.

Folks, this thread is about EPIC SYSTEMS CORP. v. LEWIS. Please drop potential hijacks that are not related to this particular case.

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