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 The court on Thursday rejected a conservative challenge to President
Barack Obama's healthcare law on a 6-3 vote and, a day later, ruled
5-4 that gay marriage should be legal nationwide.
Both cases were largely seen through the lens of national
ideological wars, with liberals backing gay marriage and Obamacare
and conservatives opposing them. But the cases could also be seen as
pro-business rulings by a court with a reputation as friendly to
corporate interests under Chief Justice John Roberts.
Unlike in other contexts, such as a series of cases in which the
court cut back on class-action lawsuits, business interests aligned
themselves with liberal activists for these cases.
"This Supreme Court is unquestionably responsive to the views of
corporate America. Here, in both the healthcare and marriage cases,
those views aligned with a progressive outcome," said Doug Kendall,
president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a
left-leaning legal activist group.
The two major rulings mask the fact that the business-related
rulings this year, with one major environmental case due to come on
the court's last day on Monday, have been a mixed bag for corporate
interests.
In one of the biggest business cases, the court on Thursday dealt a
blow to lenders and insurers by upholding a legal theory that allows
for lawsuits under the Fair Housing Act based on discriminatory
impact even when there is no evidence of intentional discrimination.
The court did hand wins to business interests in a series of
lower-profile rulings, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the
nation's biggest business lobby, on the winning side in 12 of 20
cases in which it filed friend-of-the-court briefs. The Chamber has
a policy not to get involved in social issues and did not file
briefs on the gay marriage and Obamacare cases.
That did not stop business interests from weighing in.
A total of 379 businesses and groups representing employers across
various sectors signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief backing gay
marriage. In the healthcare case, trade groups representing
hospitals and health insurance companies filed court papers backing
the Obama administration over the healthcare law.
In the marriage case, some of the nation's biggest companies,
including Procter & Gamble Co<PG.N>, American Airlines Group
Inc<AAL.O> and Johnson & Johnson<JNJ.N>, joined the brief urging the
court to rule in favor of gay marriage. Wall Street's biggest names,
including Goldman Sachs Group Inc<GS.N> and Morgan Stanley<MS.N>,
also signed on.
THE BUSINESS CASE FOR GAY MARRIAGE
The brief stressed the business case for gay marriage, saying
inconsistent state laws imposed burdens on companies and that
marriage bans can conflict with corporate anti-discrimination and
diversity policies. Thomson Reuters Corp<TRI.TO>, which owns Reuters
news, also signed on to the brief.
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In his majority opinion in the marriage case, Justice Anthony
Kennedy, while not citing the employer brief, echoed some of the
concerns raised by employers about how same-sex marriage bans meant
that gay employees in committed relationships are treated
differently from opposite-sex couples on issues such as workers'
compensation benefits and health insurance.
In the Obamacare ruling, in which the court upheld nationwide tax
subsidies essential to the 2010 Affordable Care Act's
implementation, Chief Justice John Roberts explained in detail how
the law was intended, as he said, to "improve health insurance
markets, not destroy them."
Roberts cited a brief filed by America's Health Insurance Plans, a
trade group representing companies such as Aetna Inc<AET.N> and
Anthem Inc<ANTM.N>.
The American Hospital Association, which represents more than 5,000
hospitals and other healthcare providers, also signed a brief
backing the law. Shares in various hospital operators, including HCA
Holdings Inc<HCA.N> and Community Health Systems Inc<CYH.N>, surged
on news of the ruling.
Aside from the housing discrimination ruling, other cases that
business interests lost included one earlier in June in which the
court ruled in favor of a young Muslim woman who wore a head scarf
to a job interview at clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch and sued
when she did not get the job.
Among the Chamber-backed causes that prevailed was a May ruling in
favor of defense contractor KBR Inc<KBR.N> in its legal fight with a
former employee who filed a whistleblower suit accusing it of
defrauding the U.S. government over water purification work in Iraq.
In a business case decided in December, the court ruled for
employers over worker compensation, ruling that companies do not
have to pay employees for the time they spend undergoing security
checks at the end of their shifts in a case involving an Amazon.com
Inc<AMZN.O> warehousing contractor.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)
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