09/ 27/ 2005
by Jack Faris
Chances are you didn't read anything about small business in all of the media coverage surrounding nominees to fill the two vacancies on the Supreme Court. Yet the high court often has a significant impact on your bottom line.
The court makes important decisions affecting small businesses every year. A case in point is the recent Supreme Court ruling against property owners in New London, Conn. The court said the city could take privately owned property because it stood in the way of an economic revitalization program that would eventually be turned over to developers. That decision established a dangerous precedent that could set off a land-grab by local governments around the country. In response, the U.S. Congress and at least 25 states are writing legislation to protect Americans from having their property confiscated under the guise of public use.
Also during its 2004-2005 session, the court dealt a blow to unintentionally affects older workers.
But there were favorable rulings for small business too: In March 2005, the NFIB Legal Foundation had its first win in the nation’s highest court. The justices voted to put an end to a secretive Tax Court practice and restore transparency and fairness, benefiting small-business owners who contest an income tax levy.
In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Labor Department overextended the reach of the Family and Medical Leave Act by requiring employers to grant an additional 12 weeks to employees on leave if companies failed to tell workers they could have taken their original leave under FMLA. Another 2002 ruling by the court overturned a Connecticut law that mandated continuation of generous health insurance benefits for employees with work-related injuries, saying federal law applied.
Clearly, you have a stake in who sits on the Supreme Court. It is important that those chosen for the high court have some understanding of business. Lee Reichert, a Denver attorney and chairman of the Colorado Securities Board, wrote in the June 11 Rocky Mountain News, “Much of the Supreme Court’s work directly affects businesses, whether in the tax, securities, employment, environmental, tort or bankruptcy areas of law.”
Reichert added, “Increasingly, however, the nine-member Supreme Court has come to be dominated by lawyers who have never advised private companies on the issues on which they are making law.”
Whatever your views on the social issues, there are business reasons to pay careful attention to the process of naming judges to the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Senate confirms the justices, and your senators vote in that process. For the sake of your bottom line, let them know where you stand.
