Over the past month, the vital role federal courts play in our daily lives has become more apparent to the American people. The Supreme Court of the Unites States threw out decades of precedent by taking away women’s reproductive rights, rolling back state and local gun safety laws and severely limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to address climate change and pollution.
In fact, the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn Roe v. Wade is already causing clinic closures and forcing women to travel across states to access abortions.
The reach and power of the federal courts might seem like a new development to some, but it is not. Federal judges have long played a major role in the daily lives of people. Nearly every significant law or regulation ends up in federal courts, often challenged by deep-pocketed interests.
Federal judges with lifetime appointments, nominated by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, have the final say on laws and regulations that directly impact working people. Most of this happens without any fanfare or media coverage, and the people directly impacted by these decisions often find out only when they are negatively impacted.
At the beginning of last year, roughly a quarter of sitting federal judges were nominated by former President Donald Trump and confirmed by the then-Republican controlled Senate, often confirmed on party-line votes.
Working with then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, three anti-worker justices were confirmed to the highest court in the land: Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney-Barrett. The new justices wasted no time weakening workers’ rights and the federal government’s ability to protect the American people from environmental dangers.
They joined the majority in restricting union organizers from entering farm worksites (Cedar Point Nursey v. Hassid). The case invalidated a nearly 50-year-old California regulation, which gave union organizers limited access to farms. Organizers were only permitted to enter farm worksites for up to 30 days at a time, up to four times a year and could only speak to workers for three hours a day.
In West Virginia v. EPA, the high court ruled that the EPA does not have the power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants without explicit authorization from Congress, drastically limiting the tools the agency can use to address climate change and pollution.
This ruling has implications not just for the government’s ability to protect the environment but also for how much federal agencies can do to protect workers and consumers. It is anyone’s guess which rights as well as worker and consumer protections will be on the chopping block in the years ahead.
The Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has repeatedly made decisions that stack the deck against working people. In the last five years alone, the Supreme Court diminished the power of public sector workers (Janus v. AFSCME) by allowing free riders to benefit from union contracts without paying their fair share to support the union’s fight for better working conditions, wages and benefits on their behalf.
The 2018 CNH v. Reese decision harmed UAW retirees by allowing employers to take away health care from our retirees when the contract expires rather than throughout the life of the retiree. This decision allows companies preoccupied with the bottom line to ignore agreements made at the bargaining table, thus allowing companies to shirk their responsibility to the very workers who make them profitable in the first place.
The confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first African American woman to serve on the high court was a historic milestone for our nation. Yet, her confirmation did not change the ideological balance of the court.
The Supreme Court has indicated that next session they will consider a case that could lead to even more partisan…
Read More: How the Supreme Court’s majority is trampling workers’ rights