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The conservative SCOTUS has a vendetta against the administrative state. The overturn of the bump stock ban is just the beginning: they're going after Chevron d

The conservative SCOTUS has a vendetta against the administrative state. The overturn of the bump stock ban is just the beginning: they're going after Chevron deference. This, combined with conservative justices tending to favor contract law over consumer/employee protection, means that any federal ban on noncompetes is likely to be overturned absent a statute from Congress.

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lolinder 2y ago
> the administrative state. The overturn of the bump stock ban is just the beginning It's not even sort of the beginning. The conservative stance on the role of the Supreme Court has been pretty clear for a long time and this court has been ruling that way for a few years now. Their theory is that Congress makes the laws, the Executive branch enforces them, and the Judicial branch interprets. The precedent that they've overturned has consistently been in line with this logic: they've said over and over again that if America wants a law then Congress should create it, rather than relying on executive rulemaking that gets overturned every time an administration changes or on unelected judges legislating from the bench. Whether or not you agree with them on specific issues, I think we can all agree that the current status quo where worker rights take dramatic swings every time a new party takes control of the presidency is a ridiculous situation that needs to be fixed. I want a nation of laws, not a nation of administrative rules that have a 4-year shelf life.
- kbolino 2y ago
  I do wonder if this strategy will actually move the needle at all. Conservatives have tried something like this at least twice before: lower taxes to starve the government of revenue and force cuts (largely failed and just got routed around with massive deficit spending) and interpreting the Anti-Deficiency Act in such a way that the government "shuts down" if Congress hasn't explicitly funded it, presumably in the hopes that Congress would responsibly pass a budget well before the deadline (obviously also a failure in general, since Congress waits till the last minute regularly now and shut downs happen about once or twice a Presidential administration). Edit: Make that at least three times: they've also capped the civil service which has just caused an explosion in contractors.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Yeah, I don't know. Congress is so completely and utterly broken that I'm unsure it can be fixed. Legislating from the bench is better than the administrative rulemaking in that it's at least generally more stable, but I do think that the conservative justices have a point that the actual laws should be more directly accountable to the people than the Supreme Court is. Basically, we should be able to change the laws, but it shouldn't be as simple as winning a single national election because that makes things too unstable.
    - kbolino 2y ago
      The only system that aligns more with voters that I'm aware of is the Westminster system but it has is faults too. It is after all the same system that gave us "Yes, Minister" which illustrated and lampooned the fact that the civil service and elected politicians are distinct factions each with their own agendas rarely in alignment with each other (never mind the factions within each faction).
    - School-Cotton 2y ago
      The problem with the U.S. system is twofold: first, an unusually high amount of cooperation is required to pass any law (majority of the House, 60% of the Senate, and the presidency). Second, the first-past-the-post electoral system naturally leads to a two-party duopoly and polarization that makes cooperation very difficult. No other democracy in the world has both of these flaws although some have one of them (e.g. the UK). The best systems in practice seem to be proportional-representation parliamentary ones. They generally result in coalitions of multiple generally centrist parties so things don’t change too abruptly, but passing new laws is at least possible. Of course some parties refuse to cooperate with each other: in Germany for example no mainstream party will work with the right-wing AFD, and right-leaning mainstream parties additionally refuse to work with the left-wing Die Linke (legal successor to the East German ruling party although substantially more moderate nowadays). However this doesn’t stop the big mainstream parties from working together to an extent that would be unimaginable in the U.S. It’s indeed probably impossible to fix in the U.S. because it’s so hard to amend the constitution in such a radical way.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  This is great in theory, and I agree with it in theory, but Congress has been dysfunctional for my entire adult life. With a few notable exceptions, Federal law is largely stuck at about 1993. Nobody's proposed a way to end the gridlock.
  - kbolino 2y ago
    I don't think your starting year is a coincidence: before then, Congress was nearly always held by one party: the Democrats. Though the Republicans were competitive for the Presidency, they rarely won majorities in Congress and could not hold them for long from FDR until Clinton.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Yeah, I'm aware of that. I think the theory behind the Supreme Court's actions is that by undoing the patches that we've placed over our incompetent legislative branch they'll force actual change by making life uncomfortable enough for people to get their act together. To some extent this already has happened, just at the State level, and I think a patchwork of stable state laws is still better than a bunch of very short-lived rules at the federal level.
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  Okay, but the Supreme Court justices who want to take down Chevron are insincere. The IRS exemptions for fake Christian seemingly organizations: do you think the court is going to defer to the IRS’s interpretation of the 3 word “exclusively for religious” part of the 501(c)(3) if it denies something Christian tax exemption? No. They’re going to see if that woman’s husband is a member of the Federalist Society, and if he is, then her bullshit charity that pays her salary will maintain tax exemption. My dude, Clarence Thomas’s wife is a beneficiary of deference on 501(c)(3). They like administrative deference when it suits them. Don’t try to make this about some sincere judicial opinion that has some legitimacy.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    > the Supreme Court justices who want to take down Chevron are insincere. Everyone says this about their opposition. Obviously you know that it's not true about the liberals—you know that they mean what they say. So when a conservative says that liberals are insincere and really have a hidden agenda you know that's nonsense. Turns out that that the same thing is also true on the conservative side. They generally really do believe what they say. Donald Trump is a notable exception, but even many of his supporters are sincere and are either stupidly taken in or see him as a means to a good end.
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lolinder 2y ago

> the administrative state. The overturn of the bump stock ban is just the beginning It's not even sort of the beginning. The conservative stance on the role of the Supreme Court has been pretty clear for a long time and this court has been ruling that way for a few years now. Their theory is that Congress makes the laws, the Executive branch enforces them, and the Judicial branch interprets. The precedent that they've overturned has consistently been in line with this logic: they've said over and over again that if America wants a law then Congress should create it, rather than relying on executive rulemaking that gets overturned every time an administration changes or on unelected judges legislating from the bench. Whether or not you agree with them on specific issues, I think we can all agree that the current status quo where worker rights take dramatic swings every time a new party takes control of the presidency is a ridiculous situation that needs to be fixed. I want a nation of laws, not a nation of administrative rules that have a 4-year shelf life.

kbolino 2y ago
I do wonder if this strategy will actually move the needle at all. Conservatives have tried something like this at least twice before: lower taxes to starve the government of revenue and force cuts (largely failed and just got routed around with massive deficit spending) and interpreting the Anti-Deficiency Act in such a way that the government "shuts down" if Congress hasn't explicitly funded it, presumably in the hopes that Congress would responsibly pass a budget well before the deadline (obviously also a failure in general, since Congress waits till the last minute regularly now and shut downs happen about once or twice a Presidential administration). Edit: Make that at least three times: they've also capped the civil service which has just caused an explosion in contractors.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Yeah, I don't know. Congress is so completely and utterly broken that I'm unsure it can be fixed. Legislating from the bench is better than the administrative rulemaking in that it's at least generally more stable, but I do think that the conservative justices have a point that the actual laws should be more directly accountable to the people than the Supreme Court is. Basically, we should be able to change the laws, but it shouldn't be as simple as winning a single national election because that makes things too unstable.
  - kbolino 2y ago
    The only system that aligns more with voters that I'm aware of is the Westminster system but it has is faults too. It is after all the same system that gave us "Yes, Minister" which illustrated and lampooned the fact that the civil service and elected politicians are distinct factions each with their own agendas rarely in alignment with each other (never mind the factions within each faction).
  - School-Cotton 2y ago
    The problem with the U.S. system is twofold: first, an unusually high amount of cooperation is required to pass any law (majority of the House, 60% of the Senate, and the presidency). Second, the first-past-the-post electoral system naturally leads to a two-party duopoly and polarization that makes cooperation very difficult. No other democracy in the world has both of these flaws although some have one of them (e.g. the UK). The best systems in practice seem to be proportional-representation parliamentary ones. They generally result in coalitions of multiple generally centrist parties so things don’t change too abruptly, but passing new laws is at least possible. Of course some parties refuse to cooperate with each other: in Germany for example no mainstream party will work with the right-wing AFD, and right-leaning mainstream parties additionally refuse to work with the left-wing Die Linke (legal successor to the East German ruling party although substantially more moderate nowadays). However this doesn’t stop the big mainstream parties from working together to an extent that would be unimaginable in the U.S. It’s indeed probably impossible to fix in the U.S. because it’s so hard to amend the constitution in such a radical way.
ryandrake 2y ago
This is great in theory, and I agree with it in theory, but Congress has been dysfunctional for my entire adult life. With a few notable exceptions, Federal law is largely stuck at about 1993. Nobody's proposed a way to end the gridlock.
- kbolino 2y ago
  I don't think your starting year is a coincidence: before then, Congress was nearly always held by one party: the Democrats. Though the Republicans were competitive for the Presidency, they rarely won majorities in Congress and could not hold them for long from FDR until Clinton.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Yeah, I'm aware of that. I think the theory behind the Supreme Court's actions is that by undoing the patches that we've placed over our incompetent legislative branch they'll force actual change by making life uncomfortable enough for people to get their act together. To some extent this already has happened, just at the State level, and I think a patchwork of stable state laws is still better than a bunch of very short-lived rules at the federal level.
doctorpangloss 2y ago
Okay, but the Supreme Court justices who want to take down Chevron are insincere. The IRS exemptions for fake Christian seemingly organizations: do you think the court is going to defer to the IRS’s interpretation of the 3 word “exclusively for religious” part of the 501(c)(3) if it denies something Christian tax exemption? No. They’re going to see if that woman’s husband is a member of the Federalist Society, and if he is, then her bullshit charity that pays her salary will maintain tax exemption. My dude, Clarence Thomas’s wife is a beneficiary of deference on 501(c)(3). They like administrative deference when it suits them. Don’t try to make this about some sincere judicial opinion that has some legitimacy.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > the Supreme Court justices who want to take down Chevron are insincere. Everyone says this about their opposition. Obviously you know that it's not true about the liberals—you know that they mean what they say. So when a conservative says that liberals are insincere and really have a hidden agenda you know that's nonsense. Turns out that that the same thing is also true on the conservative side. They generally really do believe what they say. Donald Trump is a notable exception, but even many of his supporters are sincere and are either stupidly taken in or see him as a means to a good end.
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