ACSBlog

  • May 8, 2013

    by Jeremy Leaming

    While the Obama administration has done much to diversify the federal bench, Senate Republicans have so far successfully kept one of the nation’s most important appellate courts free of any diversity. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rules on significant and often complex matters, including national security concerns; but it also rules on matters that are of great concern to corporate America.

    Since the Republican Party is the primary coddler of the super wealthy, it’s hardly surprising that its leaders in the Senate are working feverishly to ensure that President Obama has little if any opportunity to change the ideological makeup of the D.C. Circuit. The graphic (right) produced by People For The American Way is a compelling and accessible picture of the matter. (Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley is also pushing legislation that would cut the number of judges on the bench; he claims the D.C. Circuit has enough judges and a light caseload. For the truth, read retired D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Patricia Wald’s piece for The Washington Post.)  

    For many years now, the D.C. Circuit has been controlled by conservative judges. There are four vacancies on the bench and Senate Republicans have successfully blocked the president from filling them. As Miranda notes in a PFAW blog post, because of Senate obstructionism Obama is the “first president since Woodrow Wilson to serve a full first term without placing a judge on the D.C. Circuit.”

    An opinion yesterday by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit provides yet another example of the Court’s pro-business tilt. It knocked down a rule by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) requiring employers to post notices about the rights of workers, such as joining a union or advocating for safer working conditions. In a post for AFL-CIO NOW, Mike Hall calls the NLRB rule “commonsense and evenhanded,” noting that such notices also inform workers that they do not have to join a union. But the D.C. Circuit found a way to side with corporations that aren’t especially eager to inform workers of their rights pursuant to the National Labor Relations Act.

    That opinion follows one from earlier in the year, Canning v. NLRB, where the D.C. Circuit invalidated the president’s appointments to the five-member NLRB. That opinion has been appealed by the Obama administration. In short, the three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit essentially redefined what a recess appointment is, one that differs greatly from practice and federal court precedent. (See Sec. 2 of Article II of the U.S. Constitution.)

    The D.C. Circuit has also proven hostile to environmental regulations that are often challenged by corporations. In a post for grist, the Constitutional Accountability Center’s Simon Lazarus and Doug Kendall say the D.C. Circuit, on “any given day … has the power to throw the environmental movement into complete disarray.” (They could have added to the great delight of many corporations or the Koch brothers.)

  • May 7, 2013

    by Jeremy Leaming

    Once again a right-wing controlled federal appeals court has dealt a blow to workers’ rights. The Koch brothers and their staunch defenders of an unwieldy corporate America have yet another court action to celebrate.  

    In National Association of Manufacturers v. National Labor Relations Board, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia invalidated a rule issued by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) requiring employers to post notices containing information about rights pursuant to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). For instance a flyer, poster or notice could inform workers of their rights to create a union, engage in collective bargaining, advocate for safe working conditions, or wage a strike. The NLRB rule also stated that companies failing to post such notices were engaging in unfair labor practices.

    The three-judge panel, all consisting of Republican-appointed judges, invalidated the NLRB rule, saying it went beyond the Board’s authority, the Los Angeles Times reports. The D.C. Circuit also complained the NLRB rule amounted to government-controlled speech, saying employers covered by the NLRA cannot be forced in all circumstances to post or disseminate workers’ rights spelled out under the law. The D.C. Circuit called this “compelled speech” and said the employers “see the poster as one-sided, as favoring unionization, because it ‘fails to notify employees, …, of their rights to decertify a union, to refuse to pay dues to a union in a right-to-work state, and to object to payment of dues in the excess of the amounts required for representational purposes.’”

    The D.C. Circuit is often considered the second most important court in the country because it hears an array of weighty constitutional matters, including the creation of federal regulations, like those aimed at enforcing the NLRA. The eleven-member court has four vacancies and Senate Republicans have blocked President Obama’s attempts to fill the vacancies. Earlier this year, the Senate, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-K.Y.), again blocked the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to a seat on the bench. She has subsequently withdrawn her nomination.

    The Senate Judiciary Committee has conducted a hearing on another Obama nominee to the D.C. Circuit, Sri Srinivasan. But during that hearing, Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) announced legislation to cut the number of judges serving on that bench to 8. If Grassley has his way, Obama will be fortunate to get one judge placed on the D.C. Circuit.

  • May 7, 2013

    by Jeremy Leaming

    As the U.S. Supreme Court tries to figure out how it will handle California’s anti-equality law, Proposition 8, and the federal government’s equally noxious Defense of Marriage Act, a number of progressive-leaning states are moving forward on expanding liberty.

    Last week Rhode Island become the 10th state to enact legislation allowing same-sex couples to wed and it appears Minnesota and Delaware may be closely following suit. Before the Rhode Island legislature gave final approval of the marriage equality measure R.I. Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee (I), celebrated the impending law, saying, “We will be open for business, and we will once again affirm our legacy as a place that is tolerant and appreciative of diversity.”

    The Minnesota House has scheduled a vote for this week on a marriage equality bill, the Pioneer Press reports. The newspaper reports that the House speaker has determined he has the requisite votes to pass the measure and send it to the Senate, where its leaders say they are confident they have the votes to approve it. Gov. Mark Dayton said he would sign the marriage equality bill into law.  

    Delaware lawmakers are also on the verge of advancing equality. The state House has already passed a bill recognizing same-sex marriage and the Senate, the Associated Press reports, is preparing to vote today on the measure. The AP also notes the state’s Democratic Gov. Jack Markell has “promised to sign the measure ….”

    While marriage equality is hardly the capstone of LGBT equality, it is nonetheless an important part of the efforts to achieve equality under the law. (In this post, it’s noted that federal lawmakers are pushing other measures to protect LGBT people in the workforce and LGBT military families.)

    The states moving to end discrimination against same-sex couples – at least in the arena of granting marriage licenses and state benefits that come with legally recognized unions – provide a strong argument for federalism. That is, many argue – including some pro-equality individuals and groups – that states are moving along to recognize same-sex marriage and there is no reason for the Supreme Court to upset the process by, say, finding that states refusing to recognize same-sex marriage are violating the equal rights of lesbians and gay couples.

  • May 7, 2013
    Guest Post

    by Fatima Goss Graves & Amy K. Matsui, National Women's Law Center

    This week the Senate HELP Committee will vote on the nomination of Thomas Perez to be the next Secretary of Labor.   In the midst of the many unfair and unfounded attacks lobbed against Mr. Perez in recent weeks, an important legal doctrine for combating sex discrimination has also come under attack: disparate impact. Under Mr. Perez’s leadership as the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice, the Department has employed the longstanding disparate impact analysis to combat employment discrimination.  Its application is not only legally sound, but exceptionally important to eliminate discrimination and further justice.

    The Supreme Court and Congress have long made clear that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act “prohibits employers from using employment practices that cause a disparate impact” based on sex and other protected classes. The doctrine of disparate impact allows for a remedy when an employment practice that may be neutral on its face has an unjustified adverse effect on members of a protected class.

    Disparate impact has been crucial to addressing entrenched discriminatory employment practices.  Indeed, women’s entry into high-wage, nontraditional occupations has been made possible in large part by challenges to unfortunate employment practices that disproportionately disadvantage women, which would have otherwise remained unchanged but for the Title VII’s disparate impact doctrine.  Courts, for example, have struck down height, weight or strength requirements implemented by employers in police departments, fire departments, in construction and in correctional facilities because the requirements were not related to job performance, but instead reflected stereotypes about the skills required for a position.  Moreover, there are often alternative practices that may both satisfy job performance demands and allow for a diverse workforce.

  • May 6, 2013

    by John Schachter

    Lest anyone still doubt corporate influence (or is it control?) over the nation’s high court, Adam Liptak’s nearly 3,000-word article in yesterday’s New York Times should resolve any uncertainties. The Court’s business rulings, Liptak notes, “have been, a new study finds, far friendlier to business than those of any court since at least World War II. In the eight years since Chief Justice Roberts joined the court, it has allowed corporations to spend freely in elections in the Citizens United case, has shielded them from class actions and human rights suits, and has made arbitration the favored way to resolve many disputes.”

    The latest report, published in April in The Minnesota Law Review, looks far beyond cursory glances and anecdotal examples, studying 2,000 court decisions over a 65-year-period ending in 2011. “The study ranked the 36 justices who served on the court over those 65 years by the proportion of their pro-business votes; all five of the current court’s more conservative members were in the top 10,” Liptak notes. “But the study’s most striking finding was that the two justices most likely to vote in favor of business interests since 1946 are the most recent conservative additions to the court, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., both appointed by President George W. Bush.”

    Before right-wing skeptics criticize the latest report as biased propaganda, we should note that the authors who prepared the report – Lee Epstein, a USC professor of law and political science; William M. Landes, an economist at the University of Chicago; and Judge Richard A. Posner, of the federal appeals court in Chicago, who teaches law at the University of Chicago – are no one’s idea of a leftist cabal.

    This study, meanwhile, comes on the heels of a new report by the Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC) that found that the Supreme Court continues to hear more cases involving business interests and “that the Chamber [of Commerce] continues to win the vast majority of its cases pending before the Roberts Court.” ACS’s own Jeremy Leaming took a look at this report and the broader issue just four days ago in a post for ACSblog.