Justice Jackson: Supreme Court appears to favor 'moneyed interests' over ordinary citizens
Jackson's dissent in a case about air pollution rules came two weeks after she said the court may be unintentionally showing preferential treatment for the Trump administration.
WASHINGTON − For the second time this month, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has complained that her colleagues are weighing the scales of justice differently depending on who is asking for help.
“This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this Court than ordinary citizens,” she wrote in her disagreement with the majority’s June 20 decision that fuel producers can challenge California emissions standards under a federal air pollution law.
Jackson's dissent came two weeks after she wrote that the court is sending a “troubling message" that it's departing from basic legal standards for the Trump administration.
The court’s six conservatives include three appointed by President Donald Trump in his first term.
In a case involving the Trump administration, the Supreme Court on June 6 said Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could have complete access to the data of millions of Americans kept by the U.S. Social Security Administration.
Jackson said a majority of the court didn’t require the administration to show it would be “irreparably harmed” by not getting immediate access, one of the legal standards for intervention.
"It says, in essence, that although other stay applicants must point to more than the annoyance of compliance with lower court orders they don't like," she wrote, "the Government can approach the courtroom bar with nothing more than that and obtain relief from this Court nevertheless."
The court’s two other liberals – Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – also disagreed with the majority’s opinion in the Trump case.
But Kagan joined the conservatives June 20 in siding with the fuel producers.
Jackson, however, said there were multiple reasons the court shouldn’t have heard the case from among the thousands of appeals it receives. Those reasons include the fact that the change in administrations was likely to make the dispute go away.
But by ruling in the fuel industry’s favor, Jackson wrote, the court made it easier for others to challenge anti-pollution laws.
“And I worry that the fuel industry’s gain comes at a reputational cost for this Court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests,” she said in her dissent.
Jackson said the court’s “remarkably lenient approach” to the fuel producers’ challenge stands in contrast to the “stern stance” it’s taken in cases involving fair housing, desegrated schools or privacy concerns.
In response, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who authored the 7-2 opinion, pointed to other cases he said show the court is even handed. Those include its decision last year that anti-abortion doctors couldn’t challenge the Food and Drug Administration’s handling of a widely used abortion drug.
“In this case, as we have explained, this Court’s recent standing precedents support the conclusion that the fuel producers have standing,” Kavanaugh wrote about the industry’s ability to sue.
“The government generally may not target a business or industry through stringent and allegedly unlawful regulation, and then evade the resulting lawsuits by claiming that the targets of its regulation should be locked out of court as unaffected bystanders,” he wrote.