WASHINGTON – Conservatives have long dreamed of reducing the size of the federal government. And on Friday, part of that dream came true: The Supreme Court rejected a 40-year-old principle that strengthened the power of government regulators over environmental, labor and other laws.
Could the federal agency that sets workplace safety rules be the next target?
The Supreme Court could decide this week whether to hear a challenge to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The case, brought by business and conservative groups as well as Republican attorneys general, claims that Congress violated the Constitution more than 50 years ago by giving a federal agency — OSHA — the power to regulate workplace safety and fine companies when they put their workers in danger.
The federal agency has survived challenges to its regulatory authority in 1978 and 2011.
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But the latest case may find a receptive audience among the Supreme Court’s large conservative majority, which has reined in what it sees as regulatory overreach by executive branch agencies.
Most conservatives on the Supreme Court have expressed interest in revisiting how to apply the principle that Congress cannot delegate its legislative powers to other parts of the government, according to a brief filed by the conservative Cato Institute in support of the challenge..
Challengers say OSHA may be the most egregious example of Congress delegating authority for an indefinite period to a federal agency.
But they are hoping for a decision that will apply not only to workplace rules, but to all other areas as well.
The challenger in the OSHA case, Allstates Refractory Contractors, is represented by Don McGahn, who served as former President Donald Trump’s top White House lawyer and played a leading role in his Supreme Court nominations.
The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 was used by the Department of Labor to establish safety standards to protect workers from falls, fires, electrical shock, foreign object strikes, asphyxiation, chemical burns and more.
The fall of a footbridge support injures a worker: the penalty is $5,967
In 2019, OSHA fined Allstates after a catwalk brace fell and injured a construction worker. Allstates agreed to pay a $5,967 fine, but later sued OSHA, arguing that Congress had improperly told the agency it could set safety rules for virtually any business in America.
“If ever there was a case in which the Court should uphold the principle that Congress, not agencies, should write important rules affecting the American people, it is this one,” McGahn told the court. Supreme Court.
The Cincinnati-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit disagreed.
Workplace Safety Act Signed by Richard Nixon
Last year, a divided panel ruled 2-1 that the 1970 law, signed by then-President Richard Nixon, gave OSHA sufficient direction and also set limits on its authority.
“Thus, even though Congress has given OSHA significant authority to oversee large swaths of our economy, the discretion granted by the OSH Act is nowhere near the limit where the scope of its power is too large for the standard imposed,” Circuit Judge Richard Griffin wrote. .
Circuit Judge John Nalbandian, a Trump appointee, disagrees.
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“Almost unlimited discretion”?
Nalbandian said Congress had given the Labor Department “nearly unlimited discretion.”
Challengers argue that if they win, most OSHA regulations will not be affected because they are supported by other sources of regulatory authority.
They also stress that they are only challenging standing safety standards – not health standards – because Congress has imposed more limits on health regulations.
But the Labor Department says several safety standards — those intended to prevent immediate physical harm — would be eliminated, returning the country to the patchwork of federal and state rules that existed before the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
Since the law was adopted, workplace accidents have decreased significantly, according to the ministry.
Biden administration lawyers say the challengers want to upend the approach used for nearly a century to decide how much authority Congress can delegate to agencies and adopt a new test “without identifiable content or concrete parameters.”
But the American Farm Bureau Federation, which filed a brief with several other business groups in support of the challenge, said Congress must stop delegating its work to the Labor Department and set any specific safety standards that legislators deemed it necessary.
“The decades-long judicial path to a watered-down nondelegation test,” the groups told the court, “is inconsistent with the exclusive reservation of legislative power to Congress and with the role of the people as the ultimate source of that legislative power.”
News Source : www.usatoday.com
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