WHEREAS:
Federal agencies are established by Congress to carry out the purposes and policies of myriad important statutes that protect Americans from the excesses of corporate greed, monopoly and overreach. These administrative agencies, through experienced, professional and expert civil servants and transparent administrative procedures, ensure that the laws of Congress are properly administered and meaningfully enforced; and
WHEREAS:
The important work of administrative agencies positively impacts many aspects of our lives, whether ensuring clean and reliable drinking water; making sure banks and financial institutions securely hold our assets; protecting us from fraud when investing in stocks and bonds; protecting employees from race, gender, age and other types of discrimination; ensuring fair elections; providing nutritious lunches for children; arranging for health care for the poor and elderly; keeping our air clean; making air and rail transportation safe; ensuring the safety and health of workplaces; requiring that prescription drugs are safe, reliable and effective; protecting the rights of employees to join unions and collectively bargain; the list goes on; and
WHEREAS:
For many decades the federal judiciary has deferred to the expertise and competence of administrative agencies in enforcing complicated statutes in a complex and changing society, under the 1984 Supreme Court decision Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which held that federal judges should defer to the wisdom and expertise of administrative agency decisions when deciding legal challenges to those decisions; and
WHEREAS:
Recognizing an opportunity to avoid government oversight and accountability, corporations, anti-worker organizations and certain state government officials have launched an all-out assault on federal agencies in the courts; and
WHEREAS:
In keeping with its pro-corporate, anti-worker and partisan agenda, recent decisions of the Supreme Court — especially since the emergence of a six-justice extremist majority — have shown an intention to curtail the ability of administrative agencies to effectively enforce congressional policy. These justices wish to substitute their own policy goals, which favor corporations over individuals, in place of the fact-based and experience-driven decisions of administrative agencies charged by Congress with administering programs and enforcing laws; and
WHEREAS:
The practice of “forum shopping” allows agenda-driven litigants to choose judges that share their ideological agenda for the purpose of obtaining judicial rulings that undermine federal agency actions; and
WHEREAS:
The Supreme Court has recently struck down administrative agency actions that would have canceled roughly $430 billion in student loan debt, curtailed the Security and Exchange Commission’s ability to prosecute fraud and undermined clean air policies adopted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); and
WHEREAS:
In an extremely far-reaching decision, the court overturned the Chevron doctrine, replacing deference to administrative agencies’ reasonable interpretations with the determinations of judges. The court furthermore opened the door to new challenges even to long-settled agency decisions that are foundational to protecting the public, such as clean air and water, safe food and drugs and transparent financial markets. In the short time since the court handed down these decisions, it is increasingly clear that the court has unleashed what is likely to become a torrent of litigation by corporations and billionaire-funded ideologues attacking the ability of government to protect the public interest; and
WHEREAS:
Judges are unprepared and unfit to substitute their opinions for the reasonable interpretations made by agency experts on the vast array of technical issues overseen by federal agencies. Justice Gorsuch inadvertently illustrated this point in writing for the court in favor of states challenging the EPA’s ozone pollution control requirements. In that decision, Justice Gorsuch failed to correctly refer to nitrogen oxides, the category of chemicals EPA has sought to regulate because they contribute to acid rain and negatively affect our health. Instead, he repeatedly and mistakenly referred to EPA’s efforts to regulate “nitrous oxide,” which, of course, is commonly known as “laughing gas” and is used by dentists as an anesthetic. Decisions like these are no laughing matter. They show not only an indifference to facts, but contempt for them as well; and
WHEREAS:
Emboldened by the courts’ anti-worker rulings and hostility towards administrative agencies’ subject matter expertise, businesses such as SpaceX, Amazon and Trader Joe’s have now challenged the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an agency that has existed since 1935. SpaceX’s case, currently before a Texas District Court judge, challenges the NLRB’s authority after it issued a complaint against the company for firing nine employees in retaliation for their protected activity. The company has obtained an order blocking NLRB action on this case while the company pursues its legally radical challenge to the agency’s authority.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:
That AFSCME strongly opposes the legal attacks on federal government administrative authority as an assault by corporations, anti-worker organizations and their enablers in elected office on vital protections for workers, consumers, the environment, children, the elderly, the sick and others; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED:
That AFSCME will defend our members’ rights and interests through aggressive advocacy in legislative bodies and in the courts; and
BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED:
That AFSCME will work with allies to raise public awareness of the impact these attacks have on ordinary Americans and of the threat posed by the Supreme Court’s ideological drive to favor the interests of the rich and powerful over the democratic principles that underlie our government institutions.
SUBMITTED BY: International Executive Board