
An Extremely Consequential Supreme Court Decision Slipped Under the Radar - 3131s
https://theintercept.com/2018/06/27/american-express-supreme-court-ruling/
======
jblow
The Supreme Court is just interpreting the law. If you don’t like their
interpretation, amend the law so that it’s clear. If you aren’t able to get
that done, maybe it’s because a lot of people disagree with you about what the
law should be.

I am not much educated in this particular issue, but I have to say the
language of this blog post led me to doubt that the author is a credible
source of information.

~~~
fzeroracer
Saying that the 'Supreme Court is just interpreting the law' is a bad way of
excusing some of the more terrible decisions they've handed down over the past
few months.

With this particular case though most of the lawyers and law podcasts I follow
haven't touched upon it so I can't say I'm particularly knowledgeable about it
either. However I would say it's fair to look at any decisions with extreme
scrutiny going forward.

~~~
3131s
What I understood as the significance of this ruling is that it establishes a
different precedent for companies that are considered to participate in "two-
sided markets" in relation to anti-trust law.

I would be curious to hear some commentary on the interview below that
discusses this ruling, maybe it would have made for a better submission:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovqjj_hNAYw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovqjj_hNAYw)

~~~
eesmith
You can also read Breyer's dissent, at PDF p25 (as the PDF counts it) of the
decision, available at
[https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-1454diff_6579...](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-1454diff_6579.pdf)
.

It is not opaque bafflegab.

------
mnemotronic
I know some local artists and a gas station that tack on an extra fee if
customer pays with a CC. They're just trying to cover the costs imposed by
Amex, Visa etc. Does this decision make that illegal?

~~~
DrScump
Not necessarily _illegal_ under criminal law (e.g. in CA), but it is generally
a _violation of their merchant agreement_ with the processor.

------
yourduskquibble
There is a LOT of nuance in _every_ Supreme Court case and this author either
doesn't understand it, or chooses not to; and _both_ of those options are
dangerous to helping the public better understand the reasoning behind _any_
decision handed down by the Supreme Court.

> in their quest to utterly dominate the global political economy

> featuring Justice Neil Gorsuch rather than Judge Merrick Garland

> Supreme Court rulings like the lifeline given to the practice of
> gerrymandering, the endorsement of Trump’s Muslim travel ban, the gutting of
> public sector unions, and the defense of bakers who don’t want to serve gay
> people

To me, there is extremely biased (political) language throughout the entire
piece.

~~~
kyrra
Not sure why you are being down voted. For people down voting, let's look at
some of the rulings.

1) gay marriage and the baker. This was a 7-2 ruling that basically set zero
precedent. It just ruled that the council that ruled on the case originally
was extremely biased in their ruling.

2) unions: only 28 states have forced union dues for collective bargaining. As
well, the Federal government does not allow forced union dues. As an example
of a union that exists without the protection of forced dues: the postal
service union. Public unions aren't dead, but will need to try harder to keep
their members now. The federal unions have shown that they can still exist
without forced dues.

3) travel ban: while this law was the third attempt at it, and was rooted in
some very horrible rhetoric from Trump, the judges that ruled in favor of it
to reaffirm that the president has the executive power to do such. The
majority was very clear they were not happy with his actions, but the law is
written as such to allow him to do what he did here.

~~~
fzeroracer
If you read the dissent on the travel ban decision, you can understand why it
is bad and also deeply ironic. The Supreme Court sided with the government in
the original Korematsu case saying that the government did indeed have the
constitutional right to throw people of Japanese descent into camps.

They overturned Korematsu in this decision, only to uphold something similar
with similar racist sentiment behind it. Whenever you think of the Supreme
Court affirming that the executive has the power to do something, you should
always keep in mind that they had originally considered the executive had the
power to toss people in camps for 'security' purposes.

And on a similar note, the punting they did on the Baker case was almost
entirely made up by the court based on a completely irrelevant line by someone
tangentially related to the case. I highly recommend listening to episode 180
of the Opening Arguments podcast to understand how utterly ridiculous their
decision was.

~~~
kyrra
Baker: there were a number of reasons I believe SCOTUS punted on the case. (1)
it was founded on a bad initial ruling and they would rather have a cleaner
cut case to actually evaluate. (2) It originated in 2014, before the 2015
Obergefell v. Hodges case (that allowed gay marriage). So Colorado didn't even
allow gay marriage yet. With the above 2 points, it complicated their ruling
to be able to set a larger precedent.

Travel Ban: Korematsu was about American citizens being detained, and as the
majority said was a horrible ruling the day it was set. The travel ban is
going after countries that are unable to vet their citizens that were trying
to travel to the US (non-US citizens). US Citizens are able to apply to get
around the ban. Also, there were a few countries on the list that were not
Muslim majority countries (Venezuela, North Korea, and Chad). The law outlined
ways for countries to get off the list, which Chad succeeded in doing.

~~~
fzeroracer
For the first: your facts of the case are wrong. It originated in 2012 and in
2014 Colorado allowed for same-sex marriage. However that's irrelevant to the
case because even though same-sex marriage was not allowed, Colorado had the
Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act prior which prevented businesses from
discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, among other things. Saying
it was a bad initial case is outright wrong considering the facts they make up
in their ruling.

The travel ban is also incredibly racist. North Korea being on the list
doesn't matter because North Korea rarely allows people to travel to the
United States and the Venezuelan ban only bars a few high-level officials.
Those countries added to the list are an excuse for the government to say
'look we're not racist we have non-Muslim countries on the list!' while the
rest have little to no actual security rationale behind it.

------
XalvinX
"In a 5-4 ruling _along party lines_ "

I wonder if anyone else finds this disturbing? I thought the Supreme Court was
supposed to be beyond partisan politics. Why would "party lines" have anything
to do with this case, or is it some kind of coincidence? And which party has
more reason to help credit card companies, and why?

I hate America sometimes. All that shit we learned in civics class was just
idealistic propaganda if it all comes down to party lines.

------
bassman9000
_gutting of public sector unions_

Stopped reading there. Mandatory funding of the Dem party is not gutting of
unions.

~~~
lemoncucumber
From the article that that text links to:

> Unions say that reasoning is flawed. Nonmembers are already entitled to
> refunds of payments spent on political activities, like advertising to
> support a political candidate.

> Collective bargaining is different, the unions say, and workers should not
> be free to reap the benefits of such bargaining without paying their fair
> share of the costs.

~~~
ars
I've always wondered: Can I choose to bargain for myself, and not have the
union do it?

Best as I can tell, the answer is: No. The union forces me to pay them to
bargain for me.

That is unethical.

> should not be free to reap the benefits

Every single article on the subject always implies that there are benefits.
What if I feel they are actually drawbacks?

An easy test: If they were actually benefits people would chose to use them,
no? So let people work under union contracts, or on their own, as they chose.
But you'll never see a union suggest that, will you? They always want to force
people to "gain the benefits".

~~~
pwinnski
To your first point, non-union companies allow, in fact require each person to
bargain for themselves. Generally the power imbalance at a reasonably large
company means that employees accept what they're offered, because their only
alternative is to quit and be replaced easily. This is the reason that groups
of workers organize to form unions in the first place.

Game theory suggests that each person should want to avoid paying union dues,
and yet have everyone else pay theirs, so that the union negotiates good rates
for all, including them. The obvious outcome of voluntary dues, then, is for
each person to eventually realize this and stop paying their own dues, so that
the union collapses, shifting all power back to the employer and making
employment worse for all. Humans are short-term thinkers, though, so that
would be nigh-inevitable in most cases.

Eventually, see point one again. The mandatory dues are an attempt to stop the
several-year cycle of shifting back and forth between a union and non-union
shop, I believe.

~~~
eesmith
I'll add a concrete example. My dad worked for a TV station. Of the 5 VHF
stations in town, one was public TV, three were network, and one was
independent.

One of the other stations was union. My dad's company was not. The owner of
his company did not want the union. The owner kept the union out by paying
everyone $1 more than their counterparts in the union station.

My dad thought this was great. He got the benefits of the union - higher wages
- without paying union dues.

I look at it and think about how Dad could have gotten higher wages by being
represented by a stronger union. Union power, like most things, is non-linear.
A bigger union can pay for better negotiators than a small union can. That's a
simple economy of scale - a larger union can have dedicated, full-time
lawyers, for example, who stay on top of the laws and potential changes to the
law.

When the owner died, and the station got bought out by a private equity firm,
the firm did the usual round of layoffs, and it sold off the company into
parts. A union might have been able to fight some of those layoffs. But there
was no union.

But when he boasted about how he made more because he was non-union, such
alternatives and futures were out-of-sight/out-of-mind. As you say, "Humans
are short-term thinkers".

