ICYMI: Recent Supreme Court Rulings Fuel Special Interest Attacks, Puts Key Rules and Safeguards at Risk

In case you missed it, a new article by Politico shed light on the ongoing impact of recent Supreme Court decisions on the Biden administration’s key policies. The article details how the Court’s overturning of Chevron deference has opened the door for right-wing interests, trade groups, corporations, and states like Texas to launch legal challenges aimed at dismantling key policies and safeguards.

Read more in Politico here and below. 

Politico: The Supreme Court’s recent decisions could undo big Biden accomplishments [By Marcia Brown, 8/26/24]

Biden’s years long efforts to relieve student debt, create workplace accommodations for people who get abortions and establish discrimination protections for transgender students are all particularly vulnerable. Now Democrats worry that the rulings are creating a de facto conservative veto on what presidents can accomplish — in defiance of the court’s past willingness to defer to federal agencies that employ hundreds of policy experts.

Biden appointees have spent years writing rules to crack down on credit card late fees, require airlines to fork over cash refunds, and make millions more people eligible for overtime pay while reining in polluting industries. But the future of those policies, along with the president’s unfinished business on student debt relief and artificial intelligence, are far less secure than they were just two months ago.

The high court’s decision to end Chevron, a 40-year legal precedent that limited how judges intervened in complex agency policymaking, was one of three recent rulings set to stymie Washington’s regulatory machinery. The conservative majority also virtually eliminated the statute of limitations for challenging federal regulations and dramatically shrunk the power of the internal judges some agencies use to enforce their rules.

Lower courts have already cited the trio of cases in dozens of decisions, according to the progressive legal group Democracy Forward. That combination means that even if Trump doesn’t win the presidency and the power to undo Biden’s work from the inside, trade groups and corporations now have a greater chance of knocking rules down from the outside.

Many Democrats say industry still wields too much power in Washington, but they also see the judiciary as a fast-growing threat to their agenda.

Below are some examples of lawsuits against the Biden administration by right-wing interests and the state of Texas, which leverage the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (overturning of the Chevron deference) to strengthen their arguments: 

• The National Association for Gun Rights, et al. v. Merrick Garland, et al.: The Colorado-based National Association for Gun Rights partnered with a Texas-based firearms advocacy group in order to challenge a new rule reclassifying forced reset triggers as “machineguns” under the National Firearms Act of 1934.
• Federation of Americans for Consumer Choice, et al. v. DOL: The Austin-based Federation of Americans for Consumer Choice joined with a resident of Anderson County, Texas, to sue the Biden administration over the Department of Labor’s 2024 Fiduciary Rule.
• Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America, et al. v. OSHA:The U.S. Chamber of Commerce joined a local affiliate to sue the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in Waco federal court over the agency’s new “walk-around rule.” The regulation permits union representatives to accompany OSHA inspectors in both union and non-union workplaces.
• Carroll Independent School District v. United States Department of Education: The Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom is representing a public school district in Southlake, Texas, in a lawsuit seeking to reverse the federal Department of Education’s expansion of Title IX’s definition of “sex” to include “gender identity” following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostok v. Clayton County.
• State of Texas, et al. v. Xavier Becerra, et al.: America First Legal, a Washington D.C.-based organization, joined the state of Texas in suing the Biden administration a second time after the Department of Health and Human Services issued a rule requiring entities receiving Title X funding to dispense contraceptives to minors without parental consent.

The Supreme Court’s recent rulings are helping special interests attack worker protections, the environment and vulnerable communities. As right-wing interests continue to leverage these decisions to try and chip away at critical regulations, the stakes for maintaining these protections have never been higher.

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