Justice Clarence Thomas argued that OSHA's authority was unconstitutional. He dissented from the court's decision to reject a challenge to the agency.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has set his sights on eliminating the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday announced which cases it would consider next and which it wouldn’t. Among those the court rejected was a case that challenged the authority of OSHA, which sets and enforces standards for health and safety in the workplace.

And Thomas, widely considered to be the most conservative justice on the already mostly conservative court, wasn’t happy.

In a dissent, he explained why he believed the high court should’ve taken the case: OSHA’s power, he argues, is unconstitutional.

  • DogPeePoo@lemm.ee
    3032·
    5 months ago

    Clarence Thomas is unconstitutional. By his own originalist logic, he is only 3/5 of a human and should not be married to a white woman.

    Fuck Clarence Thomas.

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
    1821·
    5 months ago

    Is Clarence Thomas okay, like upstairs? Does he just go around pointing at random things and screaming “Unconstitutional!” ? Is “unconstitutional” in the room with us right now?

    Artist’s Rendition:

  • asteriskeverything@lemmy.world
    117·
    5 months ago

    “The agency claims authority to regulate everything from a power lawnmower’s design,” he wrote, “to the level of ‘contact between trainers and whales at SeaWorld.’”

    I fail to see anything wrong with either thing like… is he just mad it is not the people who sell lawn mowers should decide what’s safe?? Please please please don’t tell me Americans are going to dip to this new level of cognitive dissonance

  • Avid Amoeba
    901·
    5 months ago

    The program for rolling back hard fought union victories is going full steam ahead.

    I suppose the American worker could wake up to the reality that the protection against utter abuse for no pay didn’t just appear out of thin air and that only their fellow worker can be relied upon to stick for them.

    • el_bhm@lemm.ee
      21·
      5 months ago

      That is the plan. Clarence Thomas is owned by billioners parasites that want a feudalism system in their corporations.

    • ours@lemmy.worldEnglish
      20·
      5 months ago

      Ah, but the police force got much better and stronger since back in those days so good look going back to protesting to get those rights back,

      Plus splitting people over insane conspiracies keeps them weak and easier to control so Americans are less likely to stick together and fight the real enemy: the billionaires.

      • jaybone@lemmy.world
        14·
        5 months ago

        They will lay off middle class American workers, then bring in H1B visa workers to replace them at half the cost, then blame immigrants for taking their jobs. Then blame border security and terrorism.

    • rayyy@lemmy.world
      5·
      5 months ago

      I suppose the American worker could wake up to the reality that the protection against utter abuse for no pay didn’t just appear out of thin air

      Are you kidding? The Budweiser and Marlboro crowd will be told it is the fault of some brown people so they will double down on their hate and donations to elect a dictator who will “solve” their problems

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    801·
    5 months ago

    I assume soon we will be getting rid of the weekend and the 40-hour work week.

    We’re already letting children work jobs that maim and kill them again.

  • Th4tGuyII@fedia.io
    61·
    5 months ago

    Of course Clarence, the most openly corrupt, would be the one to dissent against the OSHA case. Clarence can go fuck himself

  • Track_Shovel@slrpnk.netEnglish
    58·
    5 months ago

    Just trying to bring it back to the good old days when children yearned for the mines, and men got blended up in industrial machinery.

  • Asafum@feddit.nl
    591·
    5 months ago

    Just remember guys, the supreme court isn’t corrupted by billionaires they just happen to only want to do things that benefit the ultra wealthy. The gifts from mega rich people to Thomas mean nothing.

    ItS jUsT a cOiNcIdEnCe…

    • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
      10·
      5 months ago

      Yes. But I am puzzled why the Ultras asked the supremes to end abortion. If I was an Ultra, I would have legalized public sex and drugs and tent cities. How does preventing abortion help the Ultras? Anyway, that’s a piece of the puzzle that I can’t understand well yet.

      Eliminating the EPA, OSHA, animal protections, all these things fall under the Ultra “I’m loving it” package.

      • wizzor@sopuli.xyz
        16·
        5 months ago

        Sex and drugs are already very easy to get if you are rich.

        Population growth on the other hand is an almost mandatory cornerstone of capitalism. And abortions too, will remain legal for the rich.

      • Phoenixz
        16·
        5 months ago

        They eliminated abortion because the religious extremists wanted that.

        The religious extremists are dumb as fuck as they learn and teach religion over science. That makes them useful gullible idiots that are easy to control. You want extremists behind you if you want to be a dictator as you can easily convince them with dumb obvious lies and they will be happy to have a scape goat group (it’s the evildemocrats fault!! Or the progressives! Or the gays! Or the brown people! Or the <insert other minority>)

        Also, religious extremists are very useful when you want opponents murdered, they’ll be happy to help in the name of <insert god here>

        So yeah, they have been feeding and using religious extremists for their real cause: themselves, a few wealthy and rich assholes.

      • Asafum@feddit.nl
        10·
        5 months ago

        I think it’s that more people that shouldn’t have been born are born into positions that force them to accept absolutely horrible working conditions and depress wages by their accepting anything.

        That an some of the ultra wealthy are extremely religious.

        • Krauerking@lemy.lol
          2·
          5 months ago

          Well they have to believe they got their money for some reason and it’s easier to think it was a sky daddy than their actual daddy for some reason.

      • nyctre@lemmy.world
        9·
        5 months ago

        Most likely argument for ending abortion is that it raises natality which means more workers/consumers. And I’m guessing tying it to religious beliefs reinforces the religion as well, which most agree that it’s used to control the masses.

        • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.worldEnglish
          8·
          5 months ago

          Just your daily reminder that literally no one but die hard catholics gave a single fuck about abortions until, what would today be called the right wing, made it an issue after losing the fight on desegregation and the civil rights act.

          It was just the next evolution of the southern strategy. Inflaming hatred against “non-traditional” women instead of blacks (though trust me, there was still plenty of inflaming hatred against blacks, to this day), which extended into hatred against non-traditional things in general, Which was great cause it oh so conveniently covered pretty much everything liberal.

          • nyctre@lemmy.world
            2·
            5 months ago

            Oh, yeah, infighting is probably another good reason I had totally forgotten about. Give us something to fight over. You’re right.

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
        4·
        5 months ago

        The Pope wanted it gone. This is the most Catholic Supreme Court in US history and they got rid of abortion. It really doesn’t get any deeper than that.

        Roberts in particular is really showing his age and is devout. It’s highly likely they threatened to withhold communion from him just like they did with Biden unless he gave in. If you really thought hell was real and you could end up going there you would be willing to do anything to avoid that fate. Including murder.

        Put yourself in his perspective for a moment. He kills say a million women because they are denied lifesaving treatments. Well all those women are probably going to go to heaven anyhow, and heaven is forever. If he saves those women from death he goes to hell, the women he saved still end up going where they are going but he personally gets a time period in hell that laughs at a billion eons.

        Wouldn’t you do the same? Would you really allow yourself to be tortured for fucking forever just to save people who are already saved? It makes no sense too. You might be the kinda person who would run into traffic to push a kid out of a way of a bus possibly killing yourself, but even if you were you wouldn’t just run into random traffic.

      • samus12345@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        5 months ago

        Besides serving the ultra wealthy, the corrupt Supremes also have a Fundamentalist Christian agenda that arose from when the GOP reached out to the religious right for votes. Ending abortion is of no benefit to the ultra wealthy.

    • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
      16·
      5 months ago

      I did Asbestos removal for awhile years ago. I cannot imagine not having OSHA. The amount of crap companies get away with with OSHA around is already absurd.

    • t_chalco@lemmy.world
      10·
      5 months ago

      I had no idea of this entity, but I work with enough similarly, highly nuanced public professionals that I recognize that the rapid and blind “immediately destroy all gubberment” approach will have widespread oh-holy-fuck consequenes if not just for the extensive brain vacuum potentially left in the wake of this type of growing mentality. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and perspective.

    • Natanael@slrpnk.net
      4·
      5 months ago

      If they believe congress shouldn’t have the authority to delegate authority so broad then the way fix isn’t to eliminate the delegation but to require that congress reviews the regulatory agencies to see if they’re acting as according to their intent (yes there’s risk of abuse for this too, like endless micromanaging, etc, this is just to defuse the constitutionality argument)

      Just read a bunch of audit results and discuss relevant court cases involving the varies agencies in front of congress and let them rubberstamp it

    • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
      3·
      5 months ago

      I wanted to post this channel for a long list of reason, broken down in a forensic manner, as to why this is a bad idea, glad others were here, and thinking the same.

  • Phoenixz
    525·
    5 months ago

    is unconstitutional

    At this point I’m seeing a pattern. Any time someone good has to be removed so that pure evil shit can take it’s place, the argument almost always includes at least “is unconstitutional”

    Guys, GUYS! Your constitution… Sucks. Same as your founding fathers. The US constitution is a document that was cool a few hundred years ago, but it is heavily outdated and at this point an actual new one really wouldn’t be a bad idea. Yeah yeah, the original document doesn’t suck, at least not in historic context, and definitely should be kept in a museum but stop effin quoting the damn thing as it it were Gods personao commandments. Get a new constitution for the 21st century.

    Your founding fathers were okay, of course, but stop treating them as if they were infallible gods. They weren’t. Im sure that for their time they were super smart and their ideas revolutionary, but that was centuries ago and a lot of their ideas no longer fly.

    The right to bear arms (insert joke about bear arms) was written when an arm was a musket, that would take (a) minute(s) to load a single bullet that then could barely hit a target and had the penetration power of my penis. Now we have AR15’s for children who can murder double digits other children through multiple walls within double digit seconds and basically half the country thinks this is perfectly fine and quotes that two hundred year old line as the infallible reason why.

    It’s okay. Your constitution WAS great hundreds of years ago and yeah, your founding fathers WERE awesome. They both live two hundred years away from the situation we face today. The world changed. The US changed. Science changed. Everything changed and got updated. Your constitution got a few updates but at this point could use a rewrite. You know, something healthy to start over fresh.

      • Phoenixz
        1·
        4 months ago

        For sure, you want a constitution that protects all, not a select few, you want a constitution that gives as much freedom as practically possible to all and not a select few, you want to be very clear that religion has not a goddamn thing to do with a country or again the select few will try to fuck over everyone else…

    • TurtleJoe@lemmy.world
      7·
      5 months ago

      I mean, the big philosophical divide between liberal and conservative judges is usually whether or not the constitution is a “living” document. That is, whether it can be interpreted through a modern lens, or if laws must be strictly limited by what is exactly written in the document.

      I would argue that it’s easily the former, since, one, they explicitly allow amendments to the Constitution, and, two, there is a session of the Bill of Rights where they basically say, “we can’t possibly list all the rights that people are entitled to. This list is by no means comprehensive, and just because something isn’t in here, it doesn’t mean we’ve left it out on purpose.”

      I agree that the constitution is very flawed, and that we would probably be better off without it, but one thing they were very clear on: no kings. The Trump immunity ruling was not only legal nonsense, it was clearly not an originalist interpretation (what the conservatives claim to be.)

      When you take into account all of the rulings that this current court has made, it’s quite clear that they just start with the conclusion that they want, and reason backwards to get the justification. Once you’re at that point, I’m not sure that it really matters what your legal system is based on; they’re just doing make-em-ups anyway.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
      53·
      5 months ago

      Ok your rant over? Good. If it was rewritten today it would be civilization ending levels of disaster. And you know what? OSHA is constitutional.

      • Phoenixz
        1·
        5 months ago

        it would be … Disaster

        Why? Are we no longer capable of being smart? Did the leaded gasoline do its job too good?

        Your current constitution sucks as a legal document, it should be in a museum. It was written well over 200 years ago, and I’m site there are some good basic ideas in there but most of the time its abused to death to remove rights.

        Make something new based off our current knowledge. Make it make sense.

        Prohibit guns for most people as by now its goddamn clear that people can’t be responsible enough to handle them freely

        Everyone is the same, outlaw any and all discrimination on gender, skin color, culture, etc.

        Make it very clear that religion and state are absolute separate and are not allowed to touch eachother. If it were up to me (and unfortunately it isn’t), religion as a whole would be banned because this “i failed to understand santa Claus isn’t real when I was 5 years old but my beliefs must be protected and my god wants to kill all the Jews” bullshit has given the world nothing but wars and hatred. Grow up.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
          1·
          5 months ago

          Fine you convinced me. Call a state constitutional thing. Watch how fast the new document outlaws abortion, makes the US an officially Christian nation, and shores up the electoral system such that no Democrat could ever win.

          What you aren’t looking at is that we can amend the document right now. Look at the very last purposed changes. End of birth naturalization and ban on gay marriage. You want that?

          • Phoenixz
            1·
            4 months ago

            Oh no, I agree with you on that, don’t do it NOW. I’m not sure when, though, but it has to be rewritten from scratch to clearly defined I’ll defined issues, to update with current technology, social standards, human rights, etc.

            I know that a very select few people would hate that but IDGAF

    • AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      Tons of the reasons given for why congress can do things don’t really make sense, like civil rights amendments were defended with the reasoning that congress can regulate interstate commerce, and segregation affects interstate commerce. IMO that doesn’t make sense, but everyone goes along with it because these regulations are obviously good. If we had a good constitution, we wouldn’t need to make these weird excuses to do things that are clearly necessary for the public wellbeing, but unfortunately we don’t, so we have to make do and have any decision we make be randomly struck down by the courts when they decide they don’t like it anymore.

    • obviouspornalt@lemmynsfw.com
      1·
      5 months ago

      The conservatives agree with you and want to call for a new constitutional convention so that they have an opportunity to work in the project 2025 agenda directly into a new draft of the Constitution.

      An important part of controlling state legislatures is to be able to get enough states to first call for the constitutional convention and then to control it. That’s the most effective route to ensuring that the white, Christian, business first agenda is permanently enforced

  • Krauerking@lemy.lol
    46·
    5 months ago

    Oh great. An old man who simply is getting rid of protections for average people because all he hears is how it hurts the profit margins of his good friends the uber wealthy.

    We really are just heading to a split society of no class mobility and no real consideration of the poor from the rich.

    And yet they wonder why the country is collapsing and people don’t really want to have kids anymore.