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Biden’s Labor Legacy Is in Jeopardy — With Help From the Supreme Court

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out a protection for tipped workers, pointing to the Supreme Court’s recent rollback of Chevron deference. Labor unions say it’s only a sign of more to come.

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden listens.
A a series of Biden’s pro-union regulations could be impacted by the Supreme Court’s Loper Bright opinion. Paul Sancya/AP

One of the most sweeping applications of the Supreme Court’s landmark case clipping the executive branch’s power took direct aim at Joe Biden’s pro-labor legacy. The ruling could foreshadow more to come, union leaders say.

The conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has used its newly expanded power to interpret laws to knock down a 2021 Department of Labor rule limiting when employers can pay workers less than minimum wage.

“I think this case represents a very clean pattern for other conservative courts to follow,” administrative law scholar Craig Green told NOTUS. “Where there’s a very complicated, unclear statutory regime that the agency has basically administered for some period of time and decades and decades of it are chopped away, burned away.”