Thursday, October 5, 2017

(Spoiler Alert) CA bullet train segment cost is 27% higher than initial estimate. Costs for the 119-mile stretch of a high-speed rail line planned through California's Central Valley are $1.7 billion higher than expected, so far, at $8 billion, according to the  Los Angeles Times, citing a June report that was recently made public.  More

SCOTUS

The Supreme Court just convened their new session--the first fully "benched."

ARBITRATION is one of the first big cases to be heard: The heard arguments in the highly anticipated NLRB v. Murphy Oil case, which challenges the legality of employment contracts in which employees forfeit their right to join class action lawsuits against the company and agree to resolve any disagreements through arbitration. Questions from the justices seemed to break mostly along ideological lines, though the newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, didn't give much of a hint about where he stood.

The Democratic-appointed justices seemed to present a unified front against allowing companies to ban group legal action by workers, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg warning that confidentiality provisions in many employment agreements bar workers from sharing information about their grievances and treatment

POLITICO's Josh Gerstein reported from inside the courtroom. Justice Stephen Breyer painted the argument in dark terms, telling the attorney for three employers that a favorable ruling for them would be akin to overturning "the entire heart of the New Deal." 

While most of the Republican-appointed justices seemed to favor the employers' position, the arguments did not produce conclusive evidence of how the case will come out

Gerstein writes,

For one thing, new Justice Neil Gorsuch, who received some criticism for being unusually outspoken during his initial outings on the court last April, asked no questions during the arguments on the labor case. He did appear to trade a joke privately with Justice Sonia Sotomayor. (The junior justice was more talkative at the court's second argument Monday, in an immigration-related case.).

More from Gerstein here.

The oral arguments did produce one interesting snafu--NLRB General Counsel Richard Griffin said in a letter to the Supreme Court the he gave "a series of inaccurate answers" during Monday's oral arguments, Greg Stohr reports for Bloomberg.

During the session....Griffin seemed to undercut his argument that workers must be allowed to press group claims even if they signed agreements to take disputes individually to arbitration.

Stohr writes,

Responding to Chief Justice John Roberts, Griffin [conceded] workers could [legally] be forced into an arbitration forum that barred group claims involving 50 or fewer people. The answer left Justice Samuel Alito perplexed. 'If that's the rule, you have not achieved very much,' Alito said.

In fact, Griffin later said NLRB's position was that workers could not legally be forced into an arbitration forum, even if their proposed class action represented 50 or fewer people. Griffin said in his letter that his answers "were the result of my misunderstanding the chief justice's questions and were inaccurate." More here.

Also big--Mandatory Union Dues. The Court announced last week that it will re-visit the issue of whether public sector employees can be made to pay mandatory fees to a public sector union despite not being a member of the union. This question was at the center of a Supreme Court decision back in March 2016, where the Court split 4-4 on the issue, with former Justice Antonin Scalia's seat not yet filled. The new case, Janus v. AFSCME, involves a child support specialist in the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services who is not a member of AFSCME (the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees), but is nonetheless required to pay agency fees to the union as a state employee. More 

A former Beverly Hills Mayor wrote about the impact the Janus case could have: 

Cities in California are already starting to crash and burn because of an unsustainable pension system for public employees. With CalPERS expected to significantly raise rates cities are paying each year just to keep up with the liabilities, Oroville is just the latest example of a Californian city on the brink." 

Read his article here.