U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Nino Edition

fucking

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/21/605012795/supreme-court-decision-delivers-blow-to-workers-rights

In a case involving the rights of tens of millions of private-sector employees, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote margin, delivered a major blow to workers, ruling for the first time that workers may not band together to challenge violations of federal labor laws.

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act trumps the National Labor Relations Act and that employees who sign employment agreements to arbitrate claims must do so on an individual basis — and may not band together to enforce claims of wage and hour violations....

an exceedingly smarmy and disingenuous opener from Gorsuch, just as one might have expected:

"Should employees and employers be allowed to agree
that any disputes between them will be resolved through
one-on-one arbitration? Or should employees always be
permitted to bring their claims in class or collective ac"

Sorry:

Should employees and employers be allowed to agree
that any disputes between them will be resolved through
one-on-one arbitration? Or should employees always be
permitted to bring their claims in class or collective actions,
no matter what they agreed with their employers?

I mean the only solution to this really is to take back congress and amend the statute to clearly allow employee class actions and/or bar arbitration agreements in at-will employment.

Gutting the NLRA, aka the New Deal, is the goal of the conservatives.

how dare you take away the freedom of a poultry worker to agree to one-to-one arbitration with their employer

take back congress and the presidency and then queue up some assassinations

surely the right of employees to agree to completely lopsided negotiations as a condition of employment should form the cornerstone of labor relations moving forward

this gorsuch guy is SO SMART what BRAINS on this guy

Or should employees always be permitted to bring their claims in class or collective actions, no matter what they agreed with their employers?

that "always," what a lovely touch, like one of Virginia Woolf's semicolons.

It's fairly pukeworthy how often I hear a fellow lawyer defend or try to mitigate the Gorsuch appointment, an obvious disaster for workers and ordinary people but he's "smart" and "fair-minded" (and law firms will probably never make their lawyers sign arbitration agreements so you ain't got shit to worry about).

class sympathy really trumps politics is what it boils down to

Ginsburg's dissent is five pages longer than the majority's opinion. And Gorsuch spends time in his opinion to respond point by point to the minority's arguments.

I'm sure his responses are smarmy

I haven't read the opinion yet. It hardly matters. When you see a 5-4 opinion breaking exactly along party lines, each side claiming they have the correct statutory interpretation, you know what's really going on. I mean Gorsuch's opening line basically admits that all the statutory interpretation is just a smokescreen. He just thinks employers should be able to make employees "agree" to whatever, regardless of what any statute says.

I mean I don't give a fuck about the blazing intellectual combat taking place, you either recognize that employers control the means of production and thus have massively unequal leverage or you accept the false construct of the employer and employee as contracting equals.

^ otm

hi Rufus!

https://api.oyez.org/sites/default/files/images/people/rufus_peckham/rufus_peckham.jpg

Or should employees always be permitted to bring their claims in class or collective actions, no matter what they agreed with their employers?

that "always," what a lovely touch, like one of Virginia Woolf's semicolons.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, May 21, 2018 11:58 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You’re giving him too much credit. It’s sounds like Carrie Bradshaw

So Neal K. Katyal, who was an acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, is a law professor at Georgetown and a partner at Hogan Lovells, wrote the cert petition on behalf of the employer asking the Supreme Court to weaken labor law in this case, and the NY Times let him write an op-ed back in 2017 entitled "Why Liberals Should back Neil Gorsuch.".

21st-century libs also hate workers, apparently

Does Neal K. Katyal claim to be a liberal? Seems like a highly doubtful claim to me.

dude litigated the travel ban = liberal hero

Judging an attorney's principles by examining the cases they've argued seems like a highly doubtful methodology to me.

His Twitter labels him an "extremist centrist," which is nice ass-covering.

wiki:

Katyal was critical of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. While teaching at Georgetown University Law Center for two decades, Katyal was lead counsel for the Guantanamo Bay detainees in the Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), which held that Guantanamo military commissions set up by the George W. Bush administration to try detainees "violate both the UCMJ and the four Geneva Conventions."

I know this is an uncomfortable conversation, but progressives must understand+confront role that Big Law—including heroes who’ve done great work serving in Dem admins—has played in undermining legal rights of vulnerable workers and consumers, esp through attack on class actions https://t.co/i9fLwvUcOm

— Brian Highsmith (@bd_highsmith) May 21, 2018

Um, the job of biglaw is to serve capital, what the fuck does anyone think it is?

So Neal K. Katyal, who was an acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, is a law professor at Georgetown and a partner at Hogan Lovells, wrote the cert petition on behalf of the employer asking the Supreme Court to weaken labor law in this case, and the NY Times let him write an op-ed back in 2017 entitled "Why Liberals Should back Neil Gorsuch.".

― curmudgeon, Monday, May 21, 2018 12:12 PM (ten hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is literally the exact type of motherfucker I was talking about in my earlier post in re "pukeworthy" lawyer takes

the Supreme Court ruled for the Colorado baker. "The ruling is a win for baker Jack Phillips but leaves unsettled the broader constitutional questions the case presented."

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/04/politics/masterpiece-colorado-gay-marriage-cake-supreme-court/

Yeah, seeing similar elsewhere:

So: on a quick read, SCOTUS punted the core difficult issue of Masterpiece Cakeshop by saying "however it comes out, in this case there was unlawful bias in the process." Um.

— KneelBeforeHat (@Popehat) June 4, 2018

Kagan and Breyer voted with the 5 conservative justices

The conservative justices probably couldn't muster the necessary 5 votes to establish a whole new legal framework to give everyone a right to discriminate whenever they can claim that their religion requires such discrimination. By punting the issue and dodging the entire question, they could get 7 votes using the narrowest possible legal basis, save face, and let the cakeshop owners off the hook, thereby mollifying the evangelicals and letting them claim victory, despite establishing zero precedent for the future. A better outcome than it might have been.

I'm not knocked out by the decision even if I recognize this is the usual John Roberts way of Keeping the Court Legit despite having lost control of any comity (the nine justices are yelling at each other; look at all the opinions!).

If the plea of "my religion requires me to treat certain people like lepers" ever gets official sanction, I may revive a new variant of the Thug sect, which required its acolytes to kill people, usually travelers. In my new Thug religion killing conservative Supreme Court justices would provide extra merit in heaven.

Please also establish schools and ask for voucher money for your Thug faith. The $ would of course just cover non-Thug teaching

this hadn't occurred to me, but is kind of compelling

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/06/04/donald-trump-travel-ban-supreme-court-218590

At issue in Hawaii v. Trump is whether the entry ban order results from anti-Muslim animus—that is, a kind of religious prejudice. Much of the fight is about whether courts should ignore President Trump’s Islamophobic statements when reasoning about the purpose of the entry ban. In Monday’s decision, Justice Kennedy made plain that it is appropriate to consider the prejudice in things government officials say when analyzing claims that those officials’ actions are unconstitutionally discriminatory: The key to the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, for Kennedy, was a series of statements by two members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission that displayed, or might have suggested, a prejudicial attitude toward the baker’s religious beliefs.

Good breakdown of the cake case: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/how-narrow-ruling-masterpiece-cakeshop-could-undermine-future-civil-rights-ncna879976

Breaking: In 5-4 decision Alito reverses 6th circuit & upholds Ohio's purging of infrequent voters. Ohio has purged 2 million voters since 2011, more than any other state. Black voters 2x as likely as whites to be purged in state's largest counties

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) June 11, 2018

fuck this worthless shithole-ass country

Is there any hope that Dems will ever reclaim Congress and get enough of a majority in both the Senate and House to rewrite the federal voter registration law(s) that Alito wrongly interpreted?

Ohio sends a notice after a voter skips a single federal election cycle. If they fail to respond and do not vote in the next four years, their names are removed from the rolls.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the court’s job was not to decide whether Ohio has adopted the “ideal method” for keeping rolls up to date, but only whether it complies with federal law.

The case is Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-upholds-ohios-way-of-removing-voters-from-rolls-after-they-miss-elections/2018/06/11/5013195e-62c4-11e8-a768-ed043e33f1dc_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.612d2dc87397

who ever could have seen this coming the very instant the GOP refused to give Merrick Garland a hearing

the court’s job was not to decide whether Ohio has adopted the “ideal method” for keeping rolls up to datethe voting rights of U.S. citizens had been wrongfully denied them, but only whether it complies with federal law could be plausibly twisted to allow those voting rights to be denied.

Because, after all, the US Constitution is not about rights, but about words.

John Roberts finally gets to do what the Reagan White House programmed him to do.

Just won big Supreme Court decision on Voting! Great News!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2018

Hope he gets polonium’d by Kim Jong Un

Lots fewer people able to vote in Ohio! Lots of them brown-skinned! Big win! Great news!

I agree w the conservative majority for once!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-rules-that-states-may-require-online-retailers-to-collect-sales-taxes/2018/06/21/a24e0100-755e-11e8-b4b7-308400242c2e_story.html?utm_term=.1590dd6922e3

He was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch.

weird alliances here

there goes Amazon's business model