Posts Tagged ‘Supreme Court’

May16

Justice Stevens: A rock star at Public Citizen gala

By: Angela Bradbery

 

Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, and former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, at Public Citizen’s 2013 Gala honoring the lifetime achievements of Stevens. Photo by Brendan Hoffman.

“What can you say in three minutes about someone who has dispensed justice for 35 years on the Supreme Court?”

So asked Alan Morrison, founder of the Public Citizen Litigation Group, as he introduced retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens tonight at Public Citizen’s annual gala in downtown Washington, D.C. Stevens was there to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his “gentleness, decency, searing intellect and passion for what is right” – from which all Americans have benefited, in the words of Public Citizen President Robert Weissman, who presented the award to Stevens.

While on the bench, Stevens, the third longest-serving justice in American history, displayed a deep concern with ensuring the fair treatment of all. He wrote a blistering dissent to the now infamous Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, which gave corporations the green light to spend unlimited sums of money to influence elections.

Tonight, Stevens sat on the stage with Linda Greenhouse, former Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times, for a chat before a crowd of just under 400 Public Citizen supporters. The former justice received a standing ovation before he even began speaking.

“Obviously, Justice Stevens is a rock star in this crowd,” Greenhouse remarked.

Their conversation touched on everything from sovereign immunity and Stevens’ confirmation hearing to the Bush v. Gore decision (Stevens said he often reflects about how treating hanging chads differently from dimpled chads was hard to accept). Stevens answered questions with alacrity and humor.

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Posted in: Activism, Campaign Finance, Litigation, Social Justice1 comments

November30

Federal consumer protection laws at stake in upcoming Supreme Court arbitration case

By: Christine Hines

"AT&T v. Concepcion"

Flickr photo by OZinOH

The U.S. Supreme Court may be about to take a bad situation for consumers and make it worse. In a case it recently agreed to hear called American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, the court will again decide to what extent corporations can force consumers to sign away their right to access the courts. The decision will impact whether consumers will be able to go to court to enforce federal laws meant to protect them.

Under binding mandatory, or “forced” arbitration – the language in many employment and consumer contracts (think cell phone, credit card, checking account, e-commerce and cable contracts, to name a few) requiring consumers to resolve disputes in arbitration proceedings instead of in court – consumers are steered into a private, corporate-run system that lacks oversight and where none of the safeguards of our court system are guaranteed.

Forced arbitration has become a recurring topic at the High Court, and the pro-arbitration decisions have reinforced corporate power while diminishing consumers’ legal rights. Specifically, the court has expanded the meaning of a federal law, the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), to broadly permit forced arbitration and restrict consumers’ and employees’ ability to sue a company for wrongdoing, individually or in a class action.

A recent decision, for example, was a severe blow to consumer rights. In AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, the Supreme Court permitted businesses to include language in their consumer and employment contracts that would force consumers to resolve disputes with the respective business in individualized arbitration. Businesses could ban class actions. According to the court, the FAA trumped principles of California law that effectively had prohibited most bans on class actions in contracts.

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Posted in: Congress, Consumer Protection, Social Justice1 comments

September17

The 99 Percent Solution

By: Bartlett Naylor

"Bart Naylor" "Financial policy reform"Four years ago this month, the world’s financial sector exploded, shooting shrapnel through the economy. Wounds fester to this day.

Last year this month, public outrage at Wall Street and general corporate corruption exploded in the form of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Benefits abound.

Defying easy definition, with no leadership structure, no official spokesperson, no office, not even a proverbial mission statement, “Occupations” rapidly proliferated through the United States and overseas. And the accomplishments of this otherwise amorphous energy have been concrete and sweeping. Here are a just a few:

  • OWS unburied from overlooked economics studies and made common knowledge the harsh reality of income inequality. “We are the 99 percent,” declared this movement. Among the alarming statistics: The wealthiest 400 Americans have more savings that half the entire national population.
  • Sniffed at by some for unformed/nebulous views, the OccupyTheSEC group penned an authoritative 300-page analysis of the complex Wall Street Reform Act Volcker Rule. While Wall Street’s high paid lawyers publicly complained about the rule’s difficulty, this Occupy group, composed of former derivative traders surgically dissected each detail of the federal proposal, identifying strength and weaknesses. Since then, senior staff at Washington regulatory agencies have consulted these Occupy experts.
  • Oppressed American workers, including those in beleaguered unions, drew energy from Occupy help. In New York City, for example, Occupy protestors joined in a symbolic 99 picket lines at work sites and banks. Occupy’s support for Con-Edison workers in New York locked out of their resulted in reciprocal support for specific OWS actions.
  • OWS increased attention to the corruption of corporate money in politics. Occupy proved important in approval of the STOCK Act, making members of Congress subject to the same anti-insider trading laws as average Americans. Occupy drew attention to the Supreme Court’s decision in “Citizens United” that reduced restrictions on corporate spending. That resulted in further support for the DISCLOSE Act as well as a constitutional amendment to reverse the court’s decision.

Movement or moment? Traditional conflict has supplanted OWS in the media, namely political elections. But self-identified Occupy members remain vigilant. The OccupyTheSEC gang, as noted, has continued its expert efforts on a widening front. But just as communication revolutionizes yearly (email, social networking, Twitter, livestreaming), it may be impossible to track the trajectory of Occupy. Rather, Occupy may be shattering such distinctions as movement and moment. This non-organization organization Occupy, may, in fact, be a verb.

Bartlett Naylor is Public Citizen’s financial policy advocate. Check out his piece, “Wall Street and the Cost of Forgetting” and follow him on Twitter @BartNaylor.

Posted in: Activism, Campaign Finance, Financial Reform, Open Government, Regulation, Social Justice, Uncategorized0 comments

June7

Citizens United, Meet Democracy Nationwide

By: Sean Siperstein

Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens may be retired, but he’s clearly lost none of the verve that saw him through 35 years on the court and landmark opinions for the ages like his scathing dissent in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Fittingly enough, the number of cities, towns and state legislatures joining him to condemn the court’s decision to hand unprecedented power over our democracy to the corporate elite seems to grow by the day.

Next week, citizens around the nation will take actions to spotlight that rising tide and the grassroots movement that is driving it. At a time when the obscene amount of money that went into Wisconsin’s recall elections has reminded us once again just what Citizens United has wrought, Resolutions Week events will remind America that democracy is alive and kicking in the growing momentum for the ultimate solution to the auctioning of our democracy: a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and related cases.

This May, Rhode Island became the fifth state legislature to demand a constitutional amendment to restore free and fair elections to the American people. A resolution to that effect overwhelmingly passed the Rhode Island General Assembly, while more than 200 cities and towns across the country have passed similar resolutions at the local level. Many more states, including California and Massachusetts, and local communities are waiting in the wings.

They’re heeding the call of a grassroots movement that’s growing organically in every single state.  Average citizens like California high school student Glenn Kimball become outraged upon noticing that the court is getting the Constitution wrong and undermining the integrity of our democracy. Next, they gradually and doggedly rally their neighbors and local leaders in growing numbers, and persuade their local city council or state legislators to demand action from Congress. That process repeats itself in a different community literally every day on average.

Justice Stevens’ widely covered remarks last week continued to emphasize why. The Citizens United majority went against the grain of its own rulings, past and subsequent, when it claimed that regulations cannot ever take into account the identity of a “speaker,” let alone a powerful multinational corporation with perpetual life spending money to buy influence. The court also severely contradicted its own logic just this year by leaving in place a lower-court ruling that noted the need to protect the integrity of elections from interference by the contributions of individual foreigners living in the U.S.; it notably declined to explain why their non-citizen identity mattered at all.

Citizens United and the related rulings that gave rise to it also, as Stevens noted, prevent democratically elected representatives at all levels to from effectively ensuring that elections are not corrupted by corporations and the wealthiest among us. That’s why it’s fitting and proper that elected officials at all levels of government are responding to citizen outcry demanding a constitutional amendment, and echoing it themselves in such rapidly growing numbers.

This is, in fact, what American democracy has always done when dedicated citizens realize that the rights and voices of We the People are not properly being recognized in our democracy, and take action to etch that demand into the Constitution. Former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley recently echoed that point to columnist Joel Connelly, praising the Seattle City Council’s unanimous passage of a constitutional-amendment resolution as a nationwide model rooted deeply in our history:

“The only way to do it is a Constitutional Amendment,” said Bradley.  “It has happened before when people felt powerless before corruption.  A Constitutional Amendment gave us direct election of U.S. Senators.”

[….]

The Seattle City Council recently voted for a resolution calling for the overturning of Citizens United, joining about 100 other cities.  The resolution was widely seen as tilting at windmills – but not by Bradley.

“It’s great,” he said. “It’s how change begins. Now, you try to get states to petition for a Constitutional Amendment. And then you get groups.”

Far from trying to intimidate the justices in an allegedly unprecedented way or censor anyone’s ability to speak freely, as Citizens United’s small handful of defenders have taken to alleging, Americans like Glenn Kimball are at the vanguard of modeling what American democracy should look like even as they advocate for its preservation.

And just as with the suffragettes, the abolitionists, and the previous century’s pro-democracy reformers, future students reading about their actions and determination will do so with continuing gratitude. Americans dismayed by the unprecedented spending in this year’s campaigns and despairing
over the way it played out in Wisconsin earlier, would do well to join them, both next week and beyond.

Sean Siperstein is a Legal Fellow with Public Citizen’s Democracy is For People campaign. Follow the campaign on Twitter @RuleByUs, as well as the hashtag #Democracy4 Sale, for the latest on money and politics and the campaign for a constitutional amendment!

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April25

An Anniversary You’re Forced to Remember

By: Negah Mouzoon

Friday marks the anniversary of a Supreme Court decision that you are probably unaware of, but will be forced to live with if you end up in a dispute with a corporation.

One year after a U.S. Supreme Court decision gave corporations free rein to block class action lawsuits, judges have used the decision in blocking at least 76 potential class action suits from going forward, a new report by Public Citizen and the National Association of Consumer Advocates has found.

The report, Justice Denied, tracks the anti-consumer effects of AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, in which the Supreme Court ruled that corporations could block consumers’ rights to sue collectively—even in the 19 states that have laws protecting such rights.

What began as a dispute over $30 between Vincent and Liza Concepcion and AT&T has turned into a legal monster worth millions of dollars to corporate bottom lines. The corporate lawyers and Court put profits before people, and a year later we are seeing the ripple effects, as people seeking fairness are losing their legal rights.

The report details three cases in which consumers have felt the direct impact of the ruling.

  • Class Actions Against Career Education Corporation (CEC). Before Concepcion, thousands of students collectively sued Career Education Corp., a company that owns a chain of for-profit culinary schools, for misrepresenting the potential earning power its graduates. The misleading numbers enticed many students to enroll and thus take on debilitating student loans to finance their education. According to the lawsuits, students attending the schools typically emerged with debts in excess of $40,000 and were not able to obtain jobs that paid enough to provide a reasonable chance of repaying their loans. At the time of the lawsuits, CEC did not include a class action ban in its contracts with students. The collective cases proceeded in court and resulted in payments of up to $20,000 per student. While these cases, filed before Concepcion, achieved a meaningful settlement, other cases are still pending. In a post-Concepcion era, however, students with similar collective claims may not be able to pursue redress because it would be too difficult to overcome the class action ban the
    company is now including in its contracts.
  • Putative Class Action Against Nissan. Matthew Wolf, a member of the Army reserves, returned an automobile before the expiration of his lease because he was deployed overseas. The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) clearly permits service members to terminate car leases without penalty and to recoup the pro-rated share of payments they have made in advance. But Nissan refused to reimburse the prepaid amount to the reservist. He sought a class-action lawsuit on behalf of an estimated 1,000 service members in similar situations. But, citing Concepcion, a judge ruled that he could only pursue redress for himself, not on behalf of a class.
  • Putative Class Action Against T-Mobile. Trent Alvarez’s frequent use of his so-called “unlimited” data plan triggered T-Mobile to slow down his service. T-Mobile had inserted a forced arbitration agreement into the contract when Alvarez signed for the phone, but he said he never saw it and filed a class-action complaint against T-Mobile in 2009. The company convinced the judge to suspend the case until Concepcion was decided; the court then rejected Alvarez’s argument that the class-action ban in the arbitration agreement was unenforceable.

These examples are among the dozens of instances documented in the report by Public Citizen and the National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA), revealing that the decision has already left consumers worse off. Other areas where class action suits have been restricted include cases against payday lenders, debt collectors and banking institutions.

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Posted in: Consumer Protection, Uncategorized0 comments

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