Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has set his sights on eliminating the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday announced which cases it would consider next and which it wouldn’t. Among those the court rejected was a case that challenged the authority of OSHA, which sets and enforces standards for health and safety in the workplace.
And Thomas, widely considered to be the most conservative justice on the already mostly conservative court, wasn’t happy.
In a dissent, he explained why he believed the high court should’ve taken the case: OSHA’s power, he argues, is unconstitutional.
Can we make people who vote for lack of safety regulations work affected jobs for about a year or so? How’d you think they’d vote then?
No, they make the rules and would never agree to that, just like they always vote to give themselves raises and amazing healthcare while fighting to prevent the rest of us from getting adequate pay or healthcare.
I used to argue that whoever was ultimately responsible for safety at a chemical plant should be required to have them and their family live close enough that if shot goes wrong, they’ll definitely be among the worst effected.
But then I live within the greater Charleston, WV area, and there’s a plant in a town called Institute here that makes and handles MIC, most notoriously known for being made less poisonous for use as pesticide and being the stuff that leaked and caused the Bhopal incident back when.
People should sue for damages if they have a case. Same for the Supreme Court ruling, I guess? It would make sense if someone sues the SC for something they suffer
I assume soon we will be getting rid of the weekend and the 40-hour work week.
We’re already letting children work jobs that maim and kill them again.
Of course! That’s what family values are all about! Praise the lord and pass the ammunition!
Username checks out.
Judges shouldn’t have agendas, just dockets.
TLDR: It may be unconstitutional in his opinion because of the Non Delegation Doctrine stemming from:
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress…
Basically Congress can’t just go and let the Executive branch do their job. The Executive can’t make new laws only enforce the existing ones.
Is he sure he wants that if Trump gets into power?
He’s been writing about it long before 2016 so I’d imagine so.
Yeah, but that was before Project 2025.
You think he cares?
He usually cares about what the people who bribe him want and they want Project 2025.
This is my rub with Clarence in general. On paper I agree with a very hardline reading of the constitution cause what else is it there for. We’re far too allergic to making constitutional amendments and laws and have built up a house of cards that gets toppled every time the administration changes.
However, practically speaking, there’s too many actual lives depending on supreme court decisions and delegated regulations to wait for congress to do something about it (if they aren’t stalled outright by lobbying and party opposition). If the overturning of such decisions is meant to light a fire under the ass of the legislative branch, it operates much too slowly to protect the vulnerable people who suffer in the interim. Delegation is the only reason we have a (relatively) safe and clean place to live.
Like I said elsewhere, just make congress review use of delegated authority regularly and rubberstamp it if the agency is acting reasonably, otherwise they just give new directives wherever they deem fit.
They might even let agencies notify select members of congress when changing any notable rules so they can decide if they want to call a legislative session or just OK it.
That respects the division of powers in the constitution while still letting regulatory agencies do their jobs
The problem is that congress doesn’t do anything quickly (unless it’s giving themselves a raise). That’s the whole reason delegation was needed, because they’re so slow to actually pass specific laws. Previously, the rule was that any ambiguity in the law could be interpreted as needed by the relevant agency. That way the law can be “companies need to ensure a certain level of safety for workers” and OSHA with their panel of experts can figure out the details of what precautions are needed where. Even if a rubber stamp is all that would be needed, they have a huge backlog of regulations to get through and a lot of companies that will fight tooth and nail to save a bit of money on safety equipment. If the SCOTUS takes such a case and rules against OSHA’s authority, you best believe there will be blood on their hands.
That’s why I said only notable changes should need preemptive review (if any), everything else that’s standard procedure would just be documented and OK’d after
I agree it would have very bad consequences if the agency would get blocked entirely from acting
There needs to be a statute of limitations on how long the Supreme Court can reverse things. They can’t change things 40 years after the fact when entire agencies have been built and society has restructured around the previous ruling.
The problem with that is Korematsu v. US was decided in 1944 and is technically still the law as no subsequent cases have come up to overturn it.
The two party system has resulted in grid lock on anything pf actual value like codifying in law the things the SCOTUS has been rolling back. We’ve rested on our laurels for it to all be undone.
We do have a problem with executive power creep so like there’s a world where I’m on board for non-delegation but there just is a reality that some questions are too small, detailed, and nuanced to expect a new bill out of Congress each time.
So like setting new tariffs, should be a congressional action and it was improperly delegated. Determining whether a new ladder is safe for workers, can be delegated.
What a big fat fucking nigger. He doesn’t seem to remember how people his color were treated no even a hundred years ago.
“The agency claims authority to regulate everything from a power lawnmower’s design,” he wrote, “to the level of ‘contact between trainers and whales at SeaWorld.’”
I fail to see anything wrong with either thing like… is he just mad it is not the people who sell lawn mowers should decide what’s safe?? Please please please don’t tell me Americans are going to dip to this new level of cognitive dissonance
Coming soon: the freedom to be maimed by corporations cutting corners on dangerous equipment design and safety equipment provision.
Not speaking to policy but law, he’s probably hinting that this is a violation of the non delegation doctrine.
Lawn darts are back on the menu boys
I miss lawn darts, but the ban made sense. Holy hell, people were stupid with those things.
Every little while ( more frequently these days) i hear the voice of Anita Hill in my head.
Clarence won’t stop until he’s been able to put one of his pubes on everyone’s soda can
That’s why he wants to eliminate OSHA. They’d call it a health hazard.
I hope Putin will be sent to Hauge(or die) BEFORE USA spontaniously combusts. Then Russia can do russian reversal on american brain drain.
Until then, consider EU.
They should eliminate him
Right out a fuckin window.
Oh great. An old man who simply is getting rid of protections for average people because all he hears is how it hurts the profit margins of his good friends the uber wealthy.
We really are just heading to a split society of no class mobility and no real consideration of the poor from the rich.
And yet they wonder why the country is collapsing and people don’t really want to have kids anymore.
is unconstitutional
At this point I’m seeing a pattern. Any time someone good has to be removed so that pure evil shit can take it’s place, the argument almost always includes at least “is unconstitutional”
Guys, GUYS! Your constitution… Sucks. Same as your founding fathers. The US constitution is a document that was cool a few hundred years ago, but it is heavily outdated and at this point an actual new one really wouldn’t be a bad idea. Yeah yeah, the original document doesn’t suck, at least not in historic context, and definitely should be kept in a museum but stop effin quoting the damn thing as it it were Gods personao commandments. Get a new constitution for the 21st century.
Your founding fathers were okay, of course, but stop treating them as if they were infallible gods. They weren’t. Im sure that for their time they were super smart and their ideas revolutionary, but that was centuries ago and a lot of their ideas no longer fly.
The right to bear arms (insert joke about bear arms) was written when an arm was a musket, that would take (a) minute(s) to load a single bullet that then could barely hit a target and had the penetration power of my penis. Now we have AR15’s for children who can murder double digits other children through multiple walls within double digit seconds and basically half the country thinks this is perfectly fine and quotes that two hundred year old line as the infallible reason why.
It’s okay. Your constitution WAS great hundreds of years ago and yeah, your founding fathers WERE awesome. They both live two hundred years away from the situation we face today. The world changed. The US changed. Science changed. Everything changed and got updated. Your constitution got a few updates but at this point could use a rewrite. You know, something healthy to start over fresh.
I mean, the big philosophical divide between liberal and conservative judges is usually whether or not the constitution is a “living” document. That is, whether it can be interpreted through a modern lens, or if laws must be strictly limited by what is exactly written in the document.
I would argue that it’s easily the former, since, one, they explicitly allow amendments to the Constitution, and, two, there is a session of the Bill of Rights where they basically say, “we can’t possibly list all the rights that people are entitled to. This list is by no means comprehensive, and just because something isn’t in here, it doesn’t mean we’ve left it out on purpose.”
I agree that the constitution is very flawed, and that we would probably be better off without it, but one thing they were very clear on: no kings. The Trump immunity ruling was not only legal nonsense, it was clearly not an originalist interpretation (what the conservatives claim to be.)
When you take into account all of the rulings that this current court has made, it’s quite clear that they just start with the conclusion that they want, and reason backwards to get the justification. Once you’re at that point, I’m not sure that it really matters what your legal system is based on; they’re just doing make-em-ups anyway.
Ok your rant over? Good. If it was rewritten today it would be civilization ending levels of disaster. And you know what? OSHA is constitutional.
it would be … Disaster
Why? Are we no longer capable of being smart? Did the leaded gasoline do its job too good?
Your current constitution sucks as a legal document, it should be in a museum. It was written well over 200 years ago, and I’m site there are some good basic ideas in there but most of the time its abused to death to remove rights.
Make something new based off our current knowledge. Make it make sense.
Prohibit guns for most people as by now its goddamn clear that people can’t be responsible enough to handle them freely
Everyone is the same, outlaw any and all discrimination on gender, skin color, culture, etc.
Make it very clear that religion and state are absolute separate and are not allowed to touch eachother. If it were up to me (and unfortunately it isn’t), religion as a whole would be banned because this “i failed to understand santa Claus isn’t real when I was 5 years old but my beliefs must be protected and my god wants to kill all the Jews” bullshit has given the world nothing but wars and hatred. Grow up.
Fine you convinced me. Call a state constitutional thing. Watch how fast the new document outlaws abortion, makes the US an officially Christian nation, and shores up the electoral system such that no Democrat could ever win.
What you aren’t looking at is that we can amend the document right now. Look at the very last purposed changes. End of birth naturalization and ban on gay marriage. You want that?
Rewriting the constitution is part of their plan but I very much doubt the changes they want to make are good for anyone but them.
Wow I love reading about these wacky sovcits. They always say the most silly things.
Wait, what? WHO said that? Justice of which court?
They won’t stop. By 2025 they will reinstate the crime of heresy. Mark my words.
I believe you
Dang I can’t wait for one of these bad actors to just expire. There are a whole bunch of them close to their finish line and can go any day. Why not today? Instead we get to see things erased by the billionaire class as they by-pass the democratic process. That is the real sadness here. They don’t even care that we see what they are doing. They just do it. Fuck we are screwed. 3D basement printing might save America one day like it has other countries fighting for existence. Wow, what a time to be alive.
Bezoz took him on holiday, probably
The solution to Amazon’s recruitment problems: slavery. Just chain the suckers to the warehouse and you don’t have to worry about them running away any more. And if one croaks from the heat, you won’t even have to bother covering the body any more.
The corpse disposal robot will be along soon, don’t worry.
Your body will be repurposed as energy for the factory.
Omnissiah be praised!
Now you mention it, maybe it would be more profitable to use the bodies as food. Gotta get someone to make a spreadsheet.
