How the Ruling Class Controls the Courts

As the labor movement gains momentum, the US Chamber of Commerce—the largest pro-business lobbying group in the country—is working hand-in-glove with the Supreme Court to undermine workers’ rights.

As an example, the US Supreme Court recently overturned the 9th Circuit Court’s ruling in the wage theft lawsuit, Domino’s Pizza, LLC v. Carmona, after the US Chamber Litigation Center submitted an amicus brief urging the court to throw it out. It was the case’s only “friend of the court” briefing, which the court system uses as a secondary source to influence the court.

The case, which the lower court had upheld in December 2021, had significant implications for transportation workers, including gig workers such as Uber and Lyft drivers. The ruling exempted these workers from the Federal Arbitration Act, which forces workers to pursue isolated and internal disputes with their employers, rather than via collective action. But the Supreme Court’s decision reaffirmed the status quo.

The courts are not impartial

As a condition of employment, over half of all nonunion private-sector workers are forced to mediate conflicts with their bosses through private arbitration, a process favored by large corporations including Amazon, American Express, Chime, AT&T, Zenimax Media, Twitter, DoorDash, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Wells Fargo, Uber, Lyft, Square, StubHub, Marshalls, Family Dollar (and its parent company Dollar Tree), Tesla, and Match Group (Tinder). Of course, private arbitration is anything but arbitrary—it is designed precisely to serve the interests of the bosses by atomizing workers.

Despite this, the pandemic drove workers around the country to get organized, with unionization drives and strikes on the rise. According to the most recent NLRB Election Statistics report, in the first half of 2022 alone, there were 372 more NLRB union elections compared to the same period in 2021. Workers won over 75% of these elections, through which they gained legal protection under the law to bargain collectively and to strike. In 2021, the Cornell ILR Labor Action Tracker reported 270 work stoppages at 416 locations. In  2022, that increased to 402 in 614 locations.

From Apple to Amazon, Microsoft to Chipotle, and Trader Joe’s to Starbucks, “the unions have won against all odds—we’ve never seen them win against these superstar corporations,” says John Logan, a professor of labor history at San Francisco University. Although union recognition is merely the first step in a long process of struggle, the ruling class seeks to dampen workers’ appetite for collective action by any means necessary—including the judicial system.

Take, for example, Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Should the Supreme Court agree with the US Chamber of Commerce’s amicus brief in this case,  unions will be held liable for any “intentional” damage to private property during a labor dispute (such as spoiled food, dairy, and raw materials).

The law already makes it easy for employers to avoid coming to the negotiating table, as Starbucks Workers United and the Amazon Labor Union are learning. Now, if the court rules against the Teamsters, unions would be under constant threat of being sued and fined out of existence.

As the Supreme Court ramps up attacks on the right to an abortion and to strike, its class interests are increasingly exposed. With a 53% disapproval rating, it is no longer the kind of stabilizing role for American capitalism that it was in the past.

The Chamber v. American Labor

Representing more than three million employers, the Chamber of Commerce is one of the bosses’ best weapons against the surging labor movement. Founded in 1912 to promote the interests of the capitalist class and advocate for pro-business legislation and policies at the federal and state level, the US Chamber of Commerce has a long history of shaping US politics at the expense of the working class.

Today, the US Chamber of Commerce is a powerful political entity with influence and reach on par with the major political parties. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Chamber has built a massive “grassroots” political operation fueled by a torrent of money from corporations and wealthy individuals. This financial muscle has allowed it to spend an astonishing $1.8 billion on lobbying Congress since 1998, outspending the second-largest lobbying firm in the US by an eye-popping $1 billion.

The Chamber considers this money well spent. After all, if lobbying didn’t work, corporate America wouldn’t pour so much into it. Through its efforts, the Chamber successfully blocked efforts to raise the federal minimum wage to $15, and helped kill the PRO Act, preserving corporate profits at the expense of workers’ wages and conditions. But where did this powerful political machine come from?

In 1971, the country was at the tail end of the Civil Rights movement and several radical leaders had been assassinated. Lewis Powell, a Democrat, wrote a secret memorandum to his friend Eugene B. Sydnor Jr., the chairman of the Education Committee of the US Chamber of Commerce. This memo, titled “Attack on the American Free Enterprise System,” would play a crucial role in shaping the Chamber’s political agenda for many years to come. It was written just before Powell’s nomination to the Supreme Court by Republican President Richard Nixon, making it a crucial document for understanding the Chamber’s objective development and legal efforts today.

Powell argued that for capitalism to survive, big business needed to reshape public opinion about the system through patient and careful cadre building and surveillance in schools, entertainment, and the news. This was necessary to squash the view, with “a wide following among Americans,” that capitalist countries are “controlled by big business.”

For this monumental task, the Chamber would need to provide: “strength in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.”

But all this effort would not be enough. Big business could not sit idle while the Chamber worked on public opinion and lobbied Congress. As Powell explained in his memo, the interpretation of the law is far from inconsequential. He acknowledged the successes of civil rights groups and labor unions in intervening in “scores of cases each year” through amicus briefings at the expense of business interests.

To fulfill its task, the Chamber would need a “highly competent staff of lawyers” to appear as friendly counsel in the Supreme Court, with the greatest care exercised in selecting which cases to take up to advance business interests. However, this would only be possible if big business provided the necessary funding. Six years later, in 1977, the Chamber established its legal arm, the US Chamber Litigation Center (CLC), to directly influence the courts in favor of the bosses.

Needless to say, this effort has been largely successful. According to a study published in 2018 by the University of Cincinnati Law Review, the Supreme Court sided with the Chamber’s amicus briefings 43% of the time between 1981 and 1986; 56% between 1994 and 2005; and 69% of the time from 2005 to 2013. More recently, in 2021, the Constitutional Accountability Center found that the Chamber won 83% of the cases in which it filed an amicus briefing.

Although some may argue that the Chamber’s growing success rate is only possible because the Court has grown even more conservative over time, the Chamber has played no small role in ensuring it has friends in the Court. The Chamber’s support of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, including Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett, reflects its effectiveness in realizing its long-term strategy. Their success rate in affecting Supreme Court case outcomes speaks volumes. Regardless of public opinion or the political landscape in the legislative branch, they are guaranteed a powerful presence in the Court.

Class struggle is the way forward

From promoting business interests in 1912 to working to secure them today through lobbying, amicus briefs, and loading the Supreme Court with its open partisans, the Chamber’s impact on the legal system cannot be understated. It has filed more amicus briefs with the Supreme Court than any other organization, and has been preparing for a case like Glacier Northwest for some time.

After all, the ruling class has never forgotten the heroic class struggle of the 1930s, ignited by mass layoffs, unemployment, foreclosures, and falling wages. The Great Depression saw the rise of industrial unionization and city-wide general strikes across the country.

In the 1940s, it backed the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which sought to limit the power of labor unions by placing restrictions on their ability to strike and picket. Taft-Hartley made “wildcat” strikes illegal, required unions to give 60 days’ notice before striking, and gave the president the power to intervene in strikes deemed a threat to national security, as demonstrated by President Biden’s intervention in the railroad workers’ strike last year.

Today, the Chamber has friends in the Court, Republicans and Democrats in its pocket, and an army of lawyers and judges to defend the ruling class’s interests by hook or by crook. If the Court agrees with the Chamber’s amicus brief in Glacier Northwest and sides with the bosses, it would be par for the course. No matter the outcome of this particular case, the Supreme Court is bound to the limits of capitalist property relations and cannot resolve the fundamental contradiction between the working masses and the property-owning minority.

Meaningful rights and concessions can only be won in struggle; they are not granted by “impartial” courts or “worker-friendly” legislators. Workers should, therefore, have no illusions in any of the bosses’ institutions. The real power of the working class flows from mass, united, class-independent action and revolutionary leadership—not this or that piece of paper passed by Congress or ruling by the Supreme Court.