Why would you think that? Lobbying organizations exist to advance the interests of their members. Their members in this case are businesses. This will restrict the control businesses have over their former employees. Therefore, they don’t like it.
If the SCOTUS overturns the Chevron doctrine, then this rule and probably all of the FTC's authority is on thin ice until Congress passes an act that says something more substantial and significantly less vague that "unfair business practices".
Which would be great. These agencies and bureaus have grown to an enormous scope, completely without the consent of the governed. Doesn't sound like a republic to me.
It would be catastrophic, because Congress as it stands is utterly incapable of legislating. This is why the little stuff gets delegated to unilateral decision-making withing the executive branch: If making new rules was left to congress, they could never keep up. The world moves fast, congress moves slow.
Instead, they delegate powers to agencies that can make rules within some tight purview and pursuant to some defined purpose, and if they step out of line Congress is completely within their power to legislate their preferred stance into law.
It'll be interesting to see what happens. It does sound like this clearly falls under interstate commerce, so within the scope of Fed action. Is there something that makes you think otherwise? Beyond court composition, that is.
This was something passed by a Democratic administration. Therefore Republicans hate it, and since 2/3 of the Supreme Court is Republican, it's likely to be struck down.
The actual reasoning comes later. Something-something-Federalist-Papers-something. I'm sure they'll have no trouble digging up some Founding Father who said something that sounds like banning this, if you squint right.
I know a great many lawyers, of both parties, who have more respect for the Supreme Court than I do. They are more informed and better educated than I am, so you should take my cynicism with a grain of salt. But in my experience, treating the Supreme Court as a partisanship machine yields extremely accurate predictions.
I'm sure they'll have no trouble digging up some Founding Father who said something that sounds like banning this, if you squint right.
When this country was founded, a lot of its residents were slaves, so I'm sure Thomas and Alito will find plenty of fodder in that for their "originalist" stance denying workers rights.
I'm pretty sure the constitution was not written for slaves and no "originalist" stance would consider them. This is a silly "gotcha" that you just made up so you can get mad.
The 3/5th clause has been used by prior SCOTUSs to justify decisions, so it is not a gotcha. It's history...
On that note, Alito and Thomas had to use a pre-U.S. colonial law as their grounds to overturn Roe, so there is no limit to how far they will go to use "orignalism" to further their ideology.
Interstate commerce would allow congress to make such a law. However, the real question will be if congress gave or intended to give the FTC the authority to perform this action.
This supreme court has been very down on federal powers, so it really would not be surprising if they pulled "the major questions doctrine" to ultimately kill this off.
> Interstate commerce would allow congress to make such a law. However, the real question will be if congress gave or intended to give the FTC the authority to perform this action.
That's my take as well. There is almost certainly no doubt that the commerce clause (under current precedents since the 30s) gives Congress the authority to make legal rules like this one. If there be doubt here then it will be about a) the ability of Congress to delegate this power with b) such a vague and all-encompassing term as "unfair" to describe the practices that the FTC may regulate, and/or c) whether this particular rule violates the "major questions" doctrine found in the recent W. Virginia vs. EPA case.
Sure, but FTC was authorized by congress (FTC Act 1914) to "prevent unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce" which seems pretty cut and dried? I may be missing something, this just feels pretty reasonable.
Yup, this is very much the key to why I think this will be killed.
This supreme court is very much on track to eliminate any authority federal agencies have that aren't explicitly written into law. Effectively destroying federal agencies ability to make rules.
You argument is that this case demonstrates there isn't any problem and that companies don't have actually have a significant power advantage? Not very convincing.
> Poaching all the staff away from a company is illegal in CA, it's called raiding. This change will not create laws out of thin air.
This is only true in the specific narrow situation where there is intent to harm the company. There is nothing wrong with the general case where you simply want to hire those workers.
I believe it will die more because of the originalist/textualism of the supreme court rather than considerations to which big businesses benefit (or are harmed by) this the most.
The question will ultimately arise "by what authority can the FTC make such a sweeping judgement" and it would not surprise me to hear the SC rule that this is an overstep of the authority they were given by the laws creating and maintaining the FTC.
Previously, the FTC could have argued that the chevron doctrine gives them this right. However, that is almost certainly about to be completely abolished this term.
The right of contract is almost certainly going to be more important to most members of the supreme court than any other considerations. That's my 2 cents.
"Unfair" is an awfully vague term. This rule might be a test of the recent "major questions" doctrine. The SCOTUS appears poised to reverse the Chevron doctrine, which would have given the FTC a great deal of cover here. There are a lot of reasons that the Court might reject this rule or even the FTC's authority in general.
Given that these rules are very similar to those in California, and California has a big enough economy to be a good representative sample, I don't see this being a real issue.
Otherwise, why aren't well capitalized competitors in California hiring up the best people at their competitors and crippling competition, as it were? We just don't see this happen on a large scale like this suggestions.
Now, that's my take on it at charitably. My honest opinion about it is simply: who cares. If you want people to stay, give them reasons to stay that aren't the legal equivalent of holding a gun to their head
>> Given that these rules are very similar to those in California...
CA has a corresponding law that prevents this. The last time I looked the FTC wasnt creating at NEW law to prevent the other side of this coin:
Rule 3: Workforce “Raids” Are Illegal in California
Technically, poaching employees is not illegal in California, but restrictions on workplace raids are mentioned in the legislation. In fact, state law prohibits companies from acting in bad faith to solicit a mass amount of employees from their competitors to intentionally hurt their business. This is called “raiding,” and when your competitor does it, you can file a tortious interference claim against them. Most of these cases require an employment contract to be successful in pursuit of damages.
I did say similar, not exactly. There may or may not be some effective law preventing this type of thing specifically, but in my mind, this is an edge case[0] and doesn't detract from my overall point, which is that eliminating non competes will overwhelming not end up with this being a plausible scenario.
[0]: that the California government anticipated and defined, to their credit
I doubt you are that valuable. Sure software developers are high priced, but without even knowing what company you work for I bet I can do your job at a competitor and after 3 years I'd be just as good - that is worst case when I have to learn a new programming language to expert level as well as the domain. There are only a few people who have special skills that it is even worth thinking about protected. Someone who hires you away from a competitor gains at most a couple months vs hiring someone with similar skill who doesn't work for a competitor (and thus doesn't have domain knowledge).
So employers end up competing with higher wages putting more money in the hands of employees, and talent goes to where it produces the most value, yeah that’s the point.
Yes, it was started by Taft as a business 'union' that the government could deal with. Now they're funded primarily by multinationals and so they place the concerns of those large corporations first and well before upstart startups.
I have heard the name "US Chamber of Commerce" before, and as someone who isn't a politics/government nerd, I always assumed that was some kind of government organization responsible for something...commerce related.
Clicking through to the website and seeing the kind of articles on there makes it pretty obvious that's not the case though, even ignoring the .com domain.
It's the largest lobbying group in the USA. It was created by Taft to fight organized labor. It's a core part of the Republican party, though it will diverge in the interests of capitalism. They denied climate change until 2019.
Edit: it was a dig to the pro-competition façade some pro-business people put forward.