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An Epic Supreme Court Decision on Employment
Court Watch |
2018/06/05 11:22
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False dichotomy, meretricious piety, and pay-no-attention-to-that-man-behind-the-curtain misdirection are vital arrows in the quiver of any lawyer or judge, no matter of what persuasion.
These tricks were on particularly egregious display in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, a 5-4 decision announced Monday in which the Supreme Court’s conservative majority continued its drive to narrow protection for employee rights. (The opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito; the dissent, by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.)
The issue in Epic Systems was this: Can an employer require its employees, as a condition of keeping their jobs, to submit to individual arbitration of wage-and-hour and other workplace-condition claims—not only without an option to go to court, but without an option to pursue even private arbitration in common with other employees making the same claim?
Employees’ objection to a “no group arbitration” clause is that individual arbitration may concern amounts too small to make pursuing them worthwhile. Thus, these clauses make it easier for employers to maintain unfair or even unlawful employment structures and salary systems.
The question required the court to interpret two federal statutes—the Federal Arbitration Act (1925) and the National Labor Relations Act (1935). The FAA says that “a written provision in a contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce” requiring the parties to arbitrate instead of litigate disputes “shall be valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract.” The NLRA provides that “employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.”
Begin with text: the NLRA states that it is designed to counter “inequality of bargaining power between employees who do not possess full freedom of association or actual liberty of contract and employers who are organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association.” There is no language like this in the FAA. The best histories of the FAA’s adoption suggest that it was designed to efficiently settle disputes among merchants—business interests with comparable bargaining power. The Act itself says it should not be read to affect “contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.” The sponsors stated during deliberations that it was not designed to cover labor agreements.
Thus, the issue is whether the no-group-arbitration clause, by violating that provision of the NLRA, provides “grounds as exist at law” to bar the employer-imposed requirement of individual arbitration.
Gorsuch accused Ginsburg, author of the dissent, and the other three moderate liberals—Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan—of improperly consulting their own policy preferences, refusing to harmonize two easily reconcilable federal statutes, and illicitly smuggling extra-legal commentary—legislative history—into judicial decisions. But this was purest rhetorical Pecksniffery. Gorsuch himself quite cheerfully invoked a pro-arbitration policy preference; did no more to harmonize the two statutes than did the dissents; and ignored actual history, and the text of the NLRA, in favor of a spurious extra-legal non-textual narrative of the FAA. |
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Romania: Court tells president to fire anti-graft prosecutor
Court Watch |
2018/06/02 11:06
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Romania's top court on Wednesday told the country's president to fire the chief anti-corruption prosecutor, widely praised for her efforts to root out high-level graft, but a thorn in the side of some politicians.
The move angered some Romanians. More than 1,500 people gathered in protest in Bucharest, the capital, and hundreds rallied in the western cities of Timisoara and Sibiu calling the court "a slave" of the ruling Social Democratic Party.
The constitutional court ruled in a 6-3 vote that there had been an institutional conflict after President Klaus Iohannis disagreed with the justice minister's assessment that National Anti-Corruption Directorate Chief Prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi should be dismissed on grounds of failing to do her job properly.
In his February report calling for her dismissal, the minister, Tudorel Toader, said she was authoritarian, claimed that prosecutors falsified evidence and asserted that the number of acquittals was too high. He also said she had harmed Romania's image in interviews with foreign journalists. Kovesi later refuted his accusations.
Under her leadership, the agency has successfully prosecuted lawmakers, ministers and other top officials for bribery, fraud, abuse of power and other corruption-related offenses.
Kovesi's departure would be a blow to the agency, respected by ordinary Romanians, the European Union and the U.S. The court will explain its ruling later. |
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Bitter, expensive fight for Arkansas court seat to drag on
Court Watch |
2018/05/27 12:02
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A bitter and expensive fight for an Arkansas Supreme Court seat that drew more than $1 million in outside spending and a flurry of attack ads will drag on for another six months, with an incumbent justice heading into a runoff in November against an attorney backed by an out-of-state Republican group.
Justice Courtney Goodson and David Sterling, the chief counsel for the state Department of Human Services, advanced to a runoff in the November election for the state's highest court in Tuesday's non-partisan judicial election. The two were the top candidates in a three-person race for Goodson's seat, with Appeals Court Judge Kenneth Hixson finishing third.
Goodson had faced a barrage of attack ads and mailers from the Judicial Crisis Network, a Washington group that had targeted her during her unsuccessful bid for chief justice two years ago. The group, which doesn't disclose its donors, spent more than $935,000 on TV ads bashing Goodson and Hixson, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks judicial campaign spending.
"Today was a huge victory for honest people who are fed up with the lies dark money is spreading about me," Goodson told The Associated Press Tuesday night.
The ads led to a court fight over whether they should be broadcast and Goodson said she planned to continue that legal battle. Days before the primary, a state judge ordered Little Rock area TV stations to stop airing one ad, while another judge said the spot could resume running in northwest Arkansas. Goodson has filed a similar lawsuit aimed at halting the lawsuits in the Fort Smith area. Some media and free speech advocates have opposed Goodson's lawsuits, saying judges should not decide what is broadcast during elections.
The ad that sparked the court fight criticizes Goodson over gifts received from donors and a pay raise the court requested last year. An Associated Press Fact Check of the ad found that some of its claims are misleading. The Judicial Crisis Network continued its criticism of Goodson Wednesday.
"The citizens of Arkansas want and deserve integrity on the state's Supreme Court - Justice Goodson can't run from her record of pay increases, favoritism and residing in a swamp of conflicts of interest," Carrie Severino, the group's chief counsel and policy director, said in a statement.
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High court to hear challenge to Virginia uranium mining ban
Court Watch |
2018/05/17 12:03
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The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a challenge to Virginia's decades-old ban on uranium mining.
The state has had a ban on uranium mining in place since 1982, soon after the discovery of a massive uranium deposit in the state's Pittsylvania County. It's the largest known deposit in the United States and one of the largest in the world.
The owners of the deposit put its value at $6 billion and said it would be enough uranium to power all of the United States' nuclear reactors continuously for two years.
A few years after the deposit was discovered, the price of uranium plummeted and interest in mining it waned for about two decades. But after the price of uranium rebounded, the deposit's owners attempted between 2008 and 2013 to convince Virginia lawmakers to reconsider the ban. After that effort failed, they sued Virginia in federal court in 2015. The hope was that a court would invalidate the ban and clear the path for mining the uranium. Lower courts agreed with the state, however, and dismissed the lawsuit.
In asking the high court to take the case, the companies underscored the importance of uranium to the United States. Nuclear reactors powered by uranium generate about 20 percent of the electricity consumed in the United States, the companies say. Uranium also powers the nation's fleet of nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. But 94 percent of the uranium the U.S. needs is imported, they said.
Turning the Virginia deposit into usable uranium would involve three steps. First, the uranium ore would have to be mined from the ground. The uranium would then need to be processed at a mill, where pure uranium is separated from waste rock. The waste rock, called "tailings," which remain radioactive, would then have to be securely stored.
The owners of the Virginia deposit argue that the state can regulate the uranium mining, the first step in the process, but not if the state's purpose in doing so is protecting against radiation hazards that arise from the second two steps. They say that's what motivated the state's ban. They argue the Atomic Energy Act gives federal regulators the exclusive power to regulate the radiation hazards of milling of uranium and of handling and storing the leftover tailings.
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Trump administration defends Keystone XL pipeline in court
Court Watch |
2018/05/11 11:11
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Trump administration attorneys defended the disputed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline in federal court on Thursday against environmentalists and Native American groups that want to derail the project.
President Barack Obama rejected the 1,179-mile (1,800-kilometer) line proposed by TransCanada Corporation in 2015 because of its potential to exacerbate climate change.
President Donald Trump revived the project soon after taking office last year, citing its potential to create jobs and advance energy independence.
Environmentalists and Native American groups sued to stop the line and asked U.S. District Judge Brian Morris to halt the project. They and others, including landowners, are worried about spills that could foul groundwater and the pipeline's impacts to their property rights.
Morris did not immediately rule following a four-hour Thursday hearing in federal court in Great Falls.
U.S. government attorneys asserted that Trump's change in course from Obama's focus on climate change reflected a legitimate shift in policy, not an arbitrary rejection of previous studies of the project.
"While the importance of climate change was considered, the interests of energy security and economic development outweighed those concerns," the attorneys recently wrote.
Morris previously rejected a bid by the administration to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that Trump had constitutional authority over the pipeline as a matter of national security.
Keystone XL would cost an estimated $8 billion. It would begin in Alberta and transport up to 830,000 barrels a day of crude through Montana and South Dakota to Nebraska, where it would connect with lines to carry oil to Gulf Coast refineries.
Federal approval is required because the route crosses an international border.
TransCanada, based in Calgary, said in court submissions that the pipeline would operate safely and help reduce U.S. reliance on crude from the Middle East and other regions.
The project is facing a separate legal challenge in Nebraska, where landowners have filed a lawsuit challenging the Nebraska Public Service Commission's decision to approve a route through the state. |
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Investment Fraud Litigation |
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Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a practice that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information, frequently resulting in losses, in violation of the securities laws. Securities Arbitration. Generally speaking, securities fraud consists of deceptive practices in the stock and commodity markets, and occurs when investors are enticed to part with their money based on untrue statements.
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The content contained on the web site has been prepared by Securities Law News as a service to the internet community and is not intended to constitute legal advice or a substitute for consultation with a licensed legal professional in a particular case. | Affordable Law Firm Website Design by Law Promo |
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