Scalia Opinion Further Undermines Koch-Backed Group's Attack That Merrick Garland Is Anti-Business

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published

Following the release of a misleading “scorecard” from the Koch-backed National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) -- which dishonestly represented Supreme Court nominee Judge Merrick Garland’s rulings on the D.C. Circuit as too deferential to government agencies -- the Alliance for Justice explained that Justice Antonin Scalia took “precisely the same view” as a dissent Garland joined. The dissent was related to an EPA case that the NFIB cited to criticize the nominee.

The “judicial scorecard” released by NFIB on April 12 omitted important context to smear Garland as anti-business and overly deferential to federal government agencies. A Media Matters analysis of the 35 cases cited by NFIB, concerning Garland’s judicial opinions on the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Labor, and the National Labor Relations Board, found that one or more judge appointed by a Republican was on the same side as Garland in 28 out of 35 -- or 80 percent -- of the cases.

Contacted by Media Matters about NFIB’s “scorecard” claiming that Garland's judicial record indicates he is anti-business, top legal experts derided the organization’s claims as “silly” and “nonsense.” While purporting to represent the interests of small businesses, NFIB has in fact campaigned against environmental, labor and health care policies that most small businesses support.

An April 21 blog post by the Alliance for Justice’s director of justice programs, Kyle Barry, further demonstrated that NFIB’s attacks against Garland’s rulings lack merit. Barry explained that when American Trucking Association v. EPA -- one of the cases cited in NFIB's scorecard -- reached the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia's majority opinion adopted the same legal reasoning seen in a dissent that Garland joined, calling for the case to be reheard before the full D.C. Circuit.

As Barry explained, Garland's position in the case “was dictated not by ideology or bias toward special interests, but by adherence to precedent that he swore a judicial oath to uphold”:

Among the cases NFIB cites is American Trucking Association v. EPA, which held that the Clean Air Act’s requirement that the Environmental Protection Agency set air quality standards violates the “nondelegation” doctrine—in other words, that Congress impermissibly delegated legislative power to the EPA. Judge Garland didn’t participate in the panel decision, but he did vote to rehear the case with the full D.C. Circuit, and he did join Judge David Tatel’s dissent when rehearing was denied.

Based on Judge Tatel’s dissent, NFIB concluded that Judge Garland “would have voted for the EPA,” and in this instance that’s totally fair. (This situation is very different from when a judge votes on a petition for review but doesn’t write or join any opinions, in which case the judge’s views are unknown.) Judge Tatel made clear that the Clean Air Act is in line with years of binding Supreme Court precedent. He wrote that the statute limits EPA discretion in ways “far more specific than the sweeping delegations consistently upheld by the Supreme Court for more than sixty years,” and complained that “[n]ot only did the panel depart from a half century of Supreme Court separation-of-powers jurisprudence,” it “stripped the [EPA] of much of its ability to implement the Clean Air Act, this nation’s primary means of protecting the safety of the air breathed by hundreds of millions of people.”

The problem for NFIB—and all those who wish to portray Judge Garland as a lawless anti-business radical—is that, on appeal in the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia wrote a unanimous opinion taking precisely the same view. Overturning the D.C. Circuit panel, Justice Scalia wrote that the Clean Air Act “is in fact well within the outer limits of our nondelegation precedents.” He explained that “a certain degree of discretion, and thus of lawmaking, inheres in most executive or judicial action,” and that the Supreme Court has “almost never felt qualified to second-guess Congress regarding the permissible degree of policy judgment that can be left to those executing or applying the law.”

In other words, Judge Garland’s position was dictated not by ideology or bias toward special interests, but by adherence to precedent that he swore a judicial oath to uphold.