FCWA Statement on SCOTUS

We can’t depend on our corporate power structures to protect our rights, we must continue to organize to build our power!

We are outraged by the U.S. Supreme Court’s brazen agenda to disempower our communities while expanding the reach of corporations and the carceral state. SCOTUS rulings of the past year have protected the interests of the corporate class while stripping away our rights to bodily autonomy, privacy, and reproductive choice; stripping away the right to defend ourselves against corrupt policing and indefinite detention; stripping away tribal sovereignty; hindering regulatory agencies’ power to combat climate change; protecting companies engaged in child slave labor; and weakening the right to organize in our workplaces.

These decisions impact us all, yet our most vulnerable communities—poor people in the U.S. and around the globe, disabled people, low-wage workers, immigrants, and BIPOC communities—will be impacted the most.

It’s imperative to remember that these legal rulings are possible because of long-standing systems of oppression that are protected not only by conservatives, but the ruling class in general. We must continue organizing to dismantle these systems and protect our communities. That is how we will win good and safe jobs for all, bodily autonomy for all, environmental sustainability, indigenous sovereignty, and an end to state brutality.

SCOTUS Rulings: June 2021 – June 2022

Protection for Food Corporations engaged in Child Slavery

June 17, 2021: SCOTUS decided Nestle USA, Inc. v. DOE, ruling that enslaved children could not sue Nestle and Cargill because their cocoa suppliers were based in the Ivory Coast.
June 28, 2022: a federal judge dismissed Coubaly et al v. Cargill, a lawsuit by eight citizens of Mali seeking to hold Hershey Co, Nestle SA, Cargill Inc and others liable for child slavery on Ivory Coast cocoa farms.

Property Rights over Workers’ Right to Organize

June 23, 2021: SCOTUS decided Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid.In a 6-3 ruling, SCOTUS chose the interests of property owners over workers, holding that union organizers coming to talk to farmworkers at the farm (their place of work) violates the property rights of the farm owner–essentially a “takings” clause of the Fifth Amendment. This case received less attention than 2022 rulings around abortion, and guns, yet the potential implications are no less concerning. The legal reasoning weakens the right to organize for farmworkers and potentially workers in other sectors as well.

Indefinite Detention of Immigrants

June 13, 2022: SCOTUS decided Garland v. Gonzalez, ruling that immigrants detained in the U.S. are not entitled to a bond hearing. This means thousands of people with open immigration cases who are currently in federal holding facilities can continue to be detained indefinitely.

More Consequential Cases include: