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U.S. Corporations Are Openly Trying to Destroy Core Public Institutions. We Should All Be Worried | Trader Joe's, SpaceX, and Meta are arguing in lawsuits that government agencies protecting workers and consumers—the NLRB and FTC—are "unconstitutional."

Trader Joe's, SpaceX, and Meta are arguing in lawsuits that government agencies protecting workers and consumers—the NLRB and FTC—are "unconstitutional."

A legal expert told Motherboard that these companies are attempting to take advantage of what they believe is a friendly Supreme Court—judges currently lean right by a six-to-three margin—while they can.SpaceX, accused of illegally firing eight workers who were critical of Musk, filed its lawsuit one day after the Board brought charges against it, arguing that the agency lacked presidential oversight and violated the “separation of powers” provision outlined in the U.S. Constitution. This means that lawsuits about the FTC’s constitutionality, such as that posed by Meta in November, are legally possible.Laura Phillips-Sawyer, a professor of law at the University of Georgia who studies antitrust, told Motherboard that the Supreme Court’s new “major questions” doctrine made it easier for companies to challenge agencies’ authority.“The Chevron doctrine, which everyone is talking about right now, resulted from a challenge to the EPA’s administrative authority in 1984—the EPA was not enforcing a rule critical to the Clean Air Act,” Phillips-Sawyer said in an email. “The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has embraced much of business’s constitutional agenda, along with a robust form of judicial supremacy that posits the Court as the sole and final authority over the Constitution.”“The nation’s largest corporations and trade associations, along with conservative legal advocacy groups, are spending vast sums lobbying against proposed labor law reform while mobilizing anti-union consultants and new forms of surveillance to defeat the recent unionization campaigns,” Andrias wrote.

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