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Company owners, managers, employees, and just about everyone else in the country will want to keep watching what happens with a legal filing by Amazon this week. Decisions in the case may ultimately determine the government's ability to regulate business and intervene in conflicts between employers and workers.
As such, the suit appears to reflect a strategy of conservative activists and critics of regulation, who are increasingly turning to the nation's courts to challenge the constitutionality of government agencies whose oversight they seek to escape.
The case filed by Amazon takes aim specifically at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), whose very presence in any workplace dispute causes friction with the companies it summons. Created in 1935 under the National Labor Relations Act, the agency describes its mission as protecting "the rights of private sector employees to join together, with or without a union, to improve their wages and working conditions." Its prosecutorial arm officially calls out businesses accused of violating labor laws, serving as the basis for cases in which NLRB administrative judges issue rulings.
Amazon's beef arose from a complaint that claimed the online marketplace illegally retaliated against employees at a New York warehouse that voted to unionize in 2022.
Amazon denies the allegations in its countersuit. Moreover, in a section cited by the New York Times, it also argues "the structure of the NLRB violates the separation of powers" and other articles of the U.S. Constitution, by denying it the right to a jury trial and relying on NLRB judicial rulings. Should Amazon manage to eventually take the case to the Supreme Court and win, it could neuter the power of the country's arbiter of labor disputes.
Given Amazon's other high-stakes battles with regulators--notably the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust case, just scheduled for a trial date in 2026--its run at the NLRB might be shrugged off as a vindictive riposte at regulators. But both Elon Musk's SpaceX and retailer Trader Joe's have lodged similar litigation against the agency, also challenging the legal basis of its authority. And those offensives against the NLRB are just a few of the proliferating court cases brought forth by companies attacking government regulatory agencies.
That includes suits seeking to strip many decision-making and enforcement powers of the Environmental Protection Agency by challenging its order to reduce energy plant carbon emissions--a rule a lower court has overturned.
Another case has attacked a ruling by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in what's viewed as a broader effort to gut the agency. An additional legal challenge by conservative advocates and business groups opened before the Supreme Court in November, aiming to shrink the Securities and Exchange Commission's ability to weed out and punish fraud.
Yet another suit opened before the high court last month over what on the surface appears to be a spat about enforcing fishing quotas. But the filing takes particular aim at a legal precedent establishing the legitimacy of federal agencies to create and enforce legislation. Should that be struck down and then logically applied across all administrations, the basis upon which U.S. governments have regulated companies, business sectors, and the entire economy for nearly a century would be overturned.
That scenario, according to observers like Evil Geniuses author Kurt Andersen, is the result of a well-executed strategy by conservative leaders to fill U.S. courts with carefully selected appointees. The objective: gradually shift much of the ultimate decision-making power from government and legislative offices into courtrooms where sympathetic judges preside.
"Eighty years on, we are seeing a resurgence of the antiregulatory and antigovernment forces that lost the battle of the New Deal," wrote Columbia University professor Gillian Metzger in the Harvard Business Review--way back in 2017, when concerted legal challenges were only getting started, and the liberal-conservative tilt of the high court was more evenly split than now. "Of particular relevance here, an attack on the national administrative state is also evident at the Supreme Court. The anti-administrative voices are fewer on the Court than in the political sphere and often speak in separate opinions, but they are increasingly prominent."
It remains debatable whether the rising number of court challenges seeking to eviscerate the legal power of U.S. government agencies stems from a carefully plotted conservative plan, or simply an outgrowth of huge companies with headstrong CEOs deciding to take on the only regulatory bodies that could keep them in check. What seems more certain, however, is the final verdicts in those legal confrontations will have enormous consequences for federal regulatory powers--and the country--for decades to come.
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Amazon Joins SpaceX and Trader Joe's in Fight Against Federal Regulation
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17.02.2024
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Company owners, managers, employees, and just about everyone else in the country will want to keep watching what happens with a legal filing by Amazon this week. Decisions in the case may ultimately determine the government's ability to regulate business and intervene in conflicts between employers and workers.
As such, the suit appears to reflect a strategy of conservative activists and critics of regulation, who are increasingly turning to the nation's courts to challenge the constitutionality of government agencies whose oversight they seek to escape.
The case filed by Amazon takes aim specifically at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), whose very presence in any workplace dispute causes friction with the companies it summons. Created in 1935 under the National........
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