Republican Supreme Court Threatens

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's daily newsletter posting for March 21, 2021. It's pretty scary.

The Trump/McConnell Supreme Court may be about to start exercising its right-wing power.

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, a somewhat confusing case about the rights of workers. The case is about whether union organizers can talk to farm workers in their workplaces (when they are not working). The 1975 law that permits such conversations has enabled agricultural workers, who are mostly people of color and immigrants, to bargain for better conditions. But in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, companies argue that the regulation permitting organizers into work spaces deprives the property owner of economic benefit and thus is unconstitutional.

SCOTUS's conservatives may vote in favor of the company and against the workers, which will likely have knock-on effects if a union's right to enter the workspace is curtailed.

But most frightening is the prospect of SCOTUS ruling upholding something called the nondelegation doctrine. In the 1930s, FDR established a number of agencies which would regulate various facets of the country's economic life. These agencies were very popular with the people -- but correspondingly unpopular with business leaders, who wanted to be able to act freely, without government supervision. The principle of the nondelegation doctrine didn't get much of a foothold and was pretty much ignored until the Reagan years, and the idea has been gathering steam lately.

 It looks as though the court may reexamine whether or not Congress can delegate authority to administrative agencies. It looks as though the conservative court may curtail the modern administrative state that since the 1930s has regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and promoted infrastructure.

Justice Elena Kagan has said that enactment of the nondelegation doctrine would mean that “most of Government is unconstitutional.”  

But that, of course, is the point. We are caught up in a struggle between two ideologies: one saying that the government has a significant role to play in keeping the playing field level in the American economy and society, and the other saying it does not.

If SCOTUS enacts laws with sweeping powers to end government regulation and let corporations act freely, God help us all.