US Supreme Court attacks federal regulation of corporate interests

In a much-anticipated and deeply reactionary ruling handed down Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a 40-year-old precedent to weaken government regulation of businesses and banks in a wide range of areas, including public health, worker safety, wage and hour standards, environmental protections, abortion and birth control, consumer rights, food and drug standards, and corporate oversight.

In deciding in favour of the plaintiffs in Loper Bright Enterprises v. RaimondoChief Justice John Roberts explicitly wrote that “Chevron is superseded,” referring to the so-called “Chevron deference” doctrine of 1984. Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council Ruling. This ruling declared that courts were required to defer to federal regulators and to recognize the scientific expertise of those agencies when interpreting laws that Congress had left vague.

Roberts wrote, “Government agencies have no special authority to resolve legal ambiguities. That’s what courts do.” This is an open invitation for corporate lobbyists and special interest groups to flood the courts with lawsuits challenging government regulations that run counter to their profit interests, without regard to the cost to the health and welfare of the public. It also seeks to prevent the implementation of new regulations by requiring them to be approved by legislators and courts through review.

Roberts was joined by the rest of the six right-wing justices, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The three moderates – Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Justice Elena Kagan – dissented. Sotomayor and Brown Jackson joined the dissent written by Kagan.

The Supreme Court as constituted from June 30, 2022, to the present. Front row, left to right: Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Back row, left to right: Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. (Photo: Fred Schilling, US Secret Service Collection)

The court considered Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo together with an almost identical case, Relentless v. Department of CommerceBoth cases involved a 1976 federal law that requires herring boats to have federal observers on board to collect data to prevent overfishing.

Under a 2020 interpretive rule, the companies that owned the boats were required not only to transport the observers but also to pay $700 a day to oversee them. Fishing companies in New Jersey and Rhode Island filed suit, arguing that the 1976 law did not authorize the National Marine Fisheries Service to collect the fee.

The case was funded and pushed through the courts by two advocacy groups, the Cause of Action Institute and the New Civil Liberties Alliance, both of which have ties to the network of foundations and groups funded by billionaire right-wing oil magnate Charles Koch (estimated net worth: $64.9 billion). All lower courts, including the DC Court of Appeals, rely on the Chevron precedent, ruled as expected in favor of the government and against the plaintiffs. This paved the way for the right-wing majority in the Supreme Court to take the case and use it to Chevron.

According to the New York Times, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council is one of the most widely cited precedents in American law, forming the basis for 70 Supreme Court decisions and some 17,000 lower court decisions. The Supreme Court has now overturned important precedents in each of the last three terms: on abortion in 2022, on affirmative action in 2023, and now on administrative agency power.

The court, which is unelected and whose judges are appointed for life, embodies the deeply undemocratic character of so-called “American democracy.” Its most openly fascist members, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, are both deeply implicated in Donald Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021 coup attempt. They are also the most corrupt: They have accepted the most bribes from right-wing corporate billionaires—and the court has received a total of $3 million in gifts over the past two decades, according to Fix the Court. Thomas, the highest-ranking judge, accounts for $2.4 million of the total based on documented bribes alone.

The dismantling of state control over the economy and the destruction of regulatory restraints on the profiteering and enrichment of the economic elite are part of an ongoing and accelerating social counterrevolution. In essence, the legal and governmental superstructure of capitalism, particularly in the United States, is being adapted to the underlying oligarchic character of the economy. Previous reforms, linked to mass working-class struggles and in themselves limited and highly inadequate, are being cast aside in line with the increasingly parasitic character of the American capitalist economy and its domination by vast blocs of capital.

Driven by the loss of its global industrial dominance and its enormous debt, America’s crisis-ridden ruling class is resorting ever more ruthlessly to global imperialist wars and foreign plunder, as well as to class warfare and dictatorship against its main enemy, the American working class.

As the World Socialist Website The editorial team stated in its New Year’s statement 2024:

The United States is home to the highest concentration of billionaires in the world, with their total wealth rising to $5.2 trillion in November 2023, the highest amount ever recorded, according to Americans for Tax Fairness. In the third quarter of 2023, the top 10 percent of the U.S. population owned two-thirds of the total wealth, while the bottom half owned just 2.6 percent.

Even more significant is the scale of resources controlled by giant banks and financial institutions. JPMorgan Chase, the world’s largest bank, controls $3.7 trillion in assets, more than the GDP of the UK. Private equity firms Vanguard and BlackRock together control $17.1 trillion in assets. Behind the crumbling facade of the two-party system, the US oligarchy exercises dictatorial rule over society.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the annulment of the Supreme Court ruling on Friday Chevron in glowing words:

The Supreme Court has overturned the 40-year-old federal regulatory framework, expanding the power of federal judges to overturn agency decisions in areas such as environmental, consumer, labor and safety policy and others…

Although the decision appears neutral at first glance, in practice it provides businesses with another tool to block environmental, consumer or labor protection regulations that they consider too costly in conservative-leaning federal courts.

On the other hand, the American Public Health Association and the American Cancer Society issued a joint statement on Friday saying:

We expect today’s ruling will cause significant disruption to publicly funded health insurance programs, the stability of this country’s health care and food and drug review systems, and the health and well-being of the patients and consumers we serve.

Stephen Hall, legal director of Better Markets, which campaigns for stricter regulation, said:

This decision threatens to take the United States back to the 1910s, when the government had very limited ability to protect the health, safety and welfare of Americans.

Two other rulings handed down last week underscore the Supreme Court’s pro-business, anti-social agenda in its assault on government regulatory powers. On Thursday, the right-wing majority struck down the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) authority to enforce its rules governing financial markets through internal tribunals before expert administrative law judges. Instead, the court ruled, the SEC must try accused violators in federal court before a jury.

On the same day, the court, by a 5-4 vote, put on hold an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiative to reduce smog-forming air pollution from power plants and factories that blows across state lines. The court sided with states, trade associations and companies that had called for a stay of the agency’s “Good Neighbor” plan while they challenge it in a lower court.

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