- cross-posted to:
- news
- workreform
- cross-posted to:
- news
- workreform
The Federal Trade Commission narrowly voted Tuesday to ban nearly all noncompetes, employment agreements that typically prevent workers from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own.
This sounds awesome, but I will say that I’m a bit concerned about whether or not the Supreme Court will let this stand. I’m speculating that the Supreme Court may strike it down and say that the FTC doesn’t have jurisdiction and that non-compete clauses should be handled by the Department of Labor or something like that. Imo it could fall under either department because the FTC is meant to tackle anti-trust measures, and non-compete clauses could be seen as a form of monopolistic behavior (restricting competition).
At the same time, however, non-competes have to do with labor practices, which is why I could see the Supreme Court saying that it’s something the DoL should enforce, and because (afaik at least) the DoL only has the power to enforce legislative regulation, we’d end up back where we started: waiting for Congress to get their shit together and actually do something instead of sitting around and picking fights or virtue signalling.
I hope I’m wrong though. I’d like it if our Supreme Court would let us have nice things every now and then.
What you are talking about is colloquially called Chevron Deference. And yes, it is on the kill list after Roe, Obergefell, and I can only assume Brown v Board ffs.
Not after, before (well maybe after Roe since that’s already gone).
Chevron deference is already on the chopping block, and very well might be gone by the end of the current SCOTUS term. And nobody seems to know or care.
I wonder if they might hesitate on it. Getting rid of Chevron Deference cuts both ways. Conservative justices can shoot down agency decisions, but so can liberal justices. It only makes sense for conservatives to do it if they think they can control the justice system at every level indefinitely.
They might have been feeling that way under Trump, but they might not be feeling that way anymore, and definitely won’t if Trump misses reelection.
We are all Dred Scott on this fine day
If only they could ban the Supreme Court… ;)
Or at least create SCOTUS terms, maybe. Does that do anything? Who could know such things. We need to do something though. The conservative justices aren’t legal activists, they are legal evangelicals.
Wouldn’t Department of Labour ban ALL of them instead “almost all”?
EDIT: Really? Why downvote? Wouldn’t any sane Anything of Labour ban noncompetes when court explicitly says it is their jurysdiction?
The one’s that aren’t banned are for senior executives. Which is the one place where non-competes make sense. It’s not anything that really matters.
This is covered in the article, which is probably why you’re getting downvoted.
It would come down to exactly what authority has been granted to the FTC by Congress and whether or not this falls under that. And not a broad strokes description, but just what power Congress actually delegated to them and no further. The recent EPA cases are examples of that in action.