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‘Court-Shopping’ Fuels Effort to Overturn Obama Pro-Worker Labor Rule
It’s called court-shopping. If you don’t like a law or a federal rule, find a “friendly” federal judge to overturn it – and it doesn’t matter where.
That’s what business, the radical right and their Republican state government puppets did, again, in rural Texas to overturn an Obama administration pro-worker labor rule supported by the Teamsters.
In a late October order, U.S. District Judge Marcia Crone in Beaumont threw out the administration’s order to federal contracting officers telling them to take companies’ instances of labor law-breaking – including National Labor Relations Act violations, job safety and health law citations and wage and hour complaints – into account when awarding federal contracts.
Crone, named to the bench in 2003 by anti-worker GOP President George W. Bush and quickly confirmed that year by the Senate, said Obama’s rule breaks business’ First Amendment free speech rights by penalizing those firms through publicity about their actions.
Obama’s executive order which led to the federal contracting rule and regulations implementing them “present an imminent and non-speculative threat” to the businesses, Crone said in her permanent, nationwide injunction. She halted Obama’s Labor Department and its rule, pending a trial on the merits. Crone set no trial date.
Crone’s order is important: DOL’s fair play rule would have affected big contractors – those who do more than $50 million in business – with the feds immediately, and other contractors, who do at least $500,000 in business, starting in April. The federal government awards billions of dollars in contracts yearly.
But Crone accepted the claims of business, its right-wing lobbies, including the anti-worker Associated Builders and Contractors, and GOP-run states led by Texas and Michigan, that the fair play rule, combined with the executive orders, harms federal contractors’ rights.
Crone said Obama’s rule would endanger “plaintiffs’ members’ First Amendment rights by virtue of the fact that their public reports of alleged violations may be used by their competitors and adversaries to gain competitive advantage over plaintiffs and their members.”
· Press Associates, Inc., contributed to this report.