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The original was posted on /r/keep_track by /u/rusticgorilla on 2025-01-06 11:31:51+00:00.
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Trump-appointed judges across the country are ensuring that many of the Biden administration’s most important policies—at least, the ones they haven’t already blocked—don’t survive into Trump’s second term.
Net neutrality
Last week, an all-Republican panel of the 6th Circuit struck down the Biden administration’s attempt to reinstate net neutrality. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) first established rules regarding net neutrality, or the idea that internet service providers should treat all data that travels over their networks fairly, under Obama. The Trump administration repealed the regulations in 2017, but Biden’s FCC restored the Obama-era policy last year.
A coalition of internet service provider (ISP) organizations led by the Ohio Telecom Association filed a lawsuit, arguing that the FCC exceeded its statutory authority in creating rules imposing net neutrality on ISPs.
The 6th Circuit panel—made up of Trump appointee John Bush, G.W. Bush appointee Richard Griffin, and G.W. Bush appointee Raymond Kethledge—sided with the ISPs in an opinion released Thursday. ISPs, the judges wrote, “offer only an ‘information service’…and, therefore, the FCC lacks the statutory authority to impose its desired net-neutrality policies through the ‘telecommunications service’ provisions of the Communications Act.”
Previous rulings upholding net neutrality were based on the Chevron doctrine, which required courts to give deference to the FCC’s reading of the statute. Since the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Chevron, however, the 6th Circuit is now free to substitute its own judgment in place of expert agency knowledge to misclassify the internet as an information, not a telecommunications, service. How the three judges got there is a journey in itself:
The existence of a fact or a thought in one’s mind is not “information” like 0s and 1s used by computers. The former implies knowledge qua knowledge, while the latter is knowledge reduced to a tangible medium. Consider the acts of speaking and writing. Speaking reduces a thought to sound, and writing reduces a thought to text. Both sound and text can be stored: a cassette tape for audio information, a journal for written information, or a computer for both. But during a phone call, one creates audio information by speaking, which the telephone service transmits to an interlocutor, who responds in turn. Crucially, the telephone service merely transmits that which a speaker creates; it does not access information…Reducing knowledge to a tangible medium explains how an information service “generates” information, but computers themselves do not “generate” ideas or thoughts as such.
Reproductive healthcare privacy
Days before Christmas, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk blocked the Department of Health and Human Services from enforcing a rule that strengthened privacy protections for women seeking abortions and patients receiving gender-affirming care. The rule prohibits healthcare providers and insurers from giving state law enforcement the medical records of people who obtained out-of-state care that is banned in their state of residence.
Carmen Purl, a physician in Texas, filed a lawsuit to block the rule, arguing that the federal government exceeded its authority and is preventing medical professionals from reporting possible abuse. She is represented by the Christian conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its attacks on LGBTQ+ rights. According to Purl, the rule would interfere with her “legal obligation” to “protect unborn children from abuse, neglect, or other victimization, and to protect an unborn child’s health and safety.” The lawsuit also complains that Purl would be prevented from reporting information “about patients having received abortions in other states,” which is, indeed, the entire point of the rule.
Judge Kacsmaryk sided with Purl and Alliance Defending Freedom, writing that the rule impermissibly limits the reporting of potential child abuse:
But as a posted Speed Limit mandates a driver slow down but does not outright prohibit driving, the 2024 Rule slows down the “procedures established under any law providing for the reporting of … child abuse” - even if after the doctor treads the 2024 Rule’s technicalities, disclosure would be permitted. Such curtailments constitute “limits” where HIPAA allows none…even if a more nuanced reading of the 2024 Rule allowed child-abuse reporting to Texas CPS, a nonlawyer licensed physician is not equipped to navigate these intersecting legal labyrinths. And it is precisely such restraints and impediments that Congress forbade when it comes to child-abuse reporting.
Kacsmaryk is a zealous anti-abortion advocate who previously attempted to block the FDA’s nationwide approval of abortion medication drug mifepristone.
Overtime expansion
Trump-appointed District Judge Sean Jordan issued a nationwide injunction days after the election blocking the Department of Labor from expanding access to overtime pay for millions of salaried workers. The rule would have required employers to pay overtime to salaried workers in certain executive, administrative, and professional roles who make less than $58,656 a year—giving overtime protections to more than 4 million workers.
- While overtime abuse and wage theft often receive more media coverage regarding hourly employees, employers also often take advantage of salaried workers. For example, an employer can intentionally misclassify an employee as an “exempt” role not entitled to overtime pay, forcing the employee to work unpaid overtime or risk losing their job.
A coalition of business groups (e.g., the National Retail Federation, National Association of Home Builders, National Association of Convenience Stores, etc.) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ® sued the Biden administration, arguing that the Labor Department exceeded its authority by prioritizing employee wages over job duties when determining eligibility for overtime pay. Judge Jordan ruled against the federal government, finding that the “minimum salary level imposed by the 2024 Rule ‘effectively eliminates’ consideration of whether an employee performs ‘bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity’ duties in favor of what amounts to a salary-only test.”
This is the second time that the Eastern District of Texas court has blocked a Democratic administration’s attempt to expand overtime protections. Obama tried to raise the threshold for overtime exemptions in 2016 from $23,660 to $47,000 and indexed it to wage growth. Then, as now, a judge ruled that the Obama administration exceeded its authority. However, a few years later, the Trump administration modestly raised the threshold to $35,568 without lawsuits from red states sparking judicial interference. It is estimated that 3.2 million more workers would have been protected from overtime abuse under Obama’s rule than Trump’s.
DACA health insurance
Trump-appointed judge Daniel Traynor blocked a Biden administration rule last month that allowed Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients to access health insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Over 100,000 young people who were brought to the United States as children would have been eligible to gain health coverage through the exchange.
A coalition of 19 Republican states, led by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, filed a lawsuit arguing that the rule violated the “plain langu…
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