Gorsuch & The Case of The Frozen Truck Driver; Gorsuch Argues That COVID Is No Big Deal

[appalachiablue]

- Legislators Grill Gorsuch over absurd decision in Frozen Trucker Case.
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- HuffPost, Nov. 20, *2017. -Ed.

In his victory lap speech at the annual conference of the Federalist Society, Neil Gorsuch archly revisited the controversey surrounding his bizarre (but revealing) dissent in Trans-Am Trucking v. Administrative Review Board, U.S. Department of Labor (2016). This is what Gorsuch said.
- “When it’s done everyone, who’s not a lawyer is going to think I just hate truckers … but so be it. In our legal system, judges wear robes, not capes.” -
Gorsuch and his black-tied cohorts at the Federalist Society extravaganza all got a good “let them eat cake” chuckle from his Trans-Am Trucking “dissent defense.” But if you read the majority opinion of the Court, and then Gorsuch’s dissent, the poverty of his analysis is striking, and its import vast beyond the scope of the decision itself.

- The Case of the Frozen Truck Driver: In Jan. 2009, Alphonse Maddin was transporting cargo through Ill. when the brakes on his trailer froze because of subzero temperatures. Maddin reported the problem to his employer, TransAm Trucking & waited 3 hours for a repair truck. Lacking heat, losing feeling in his extremities, numb in his torso, & uncertain about when (or if) the repair truck would arrive, Maddin finally unhitched his cab from the trailer & drove away, leaving the trailer unattended. - He was terminated for abandoning the trailer. The Court upheld the final order of the Administrative Review Board of the Dept. of Labor, which ruled Maddin engaged in protected activity under the Surface Transportation Assistance Act (STAA) when he reported the frozen brake problem to TransAm & when he refused to obey his supervisor’s instruction to either stay with the trailer & wait for help or to drive the truck while dragging the trailer.

This appellate decision turned on the ambiguities of the undefined term “operate” in the STAA, with some reliance upon the influential Chevron Supreme Court decision to affirm the authority of the Dept. of Labor, in this instance, to interpret its way through this statutory ambiguity. The Court’s opinion pivots on the protected status offered by the STAA to an employee who “refuses to operate” a vehicle that a reasonable person might conclude was unsafe to the employee or the public. The Court dismisses TransAm’s assertion that because Maddin drove the truck after being told to “stay put,” he did, in fact, “operate” his vehicle & so could not claim protection under the “refusal to operate” clause. In the absence of a statutory definition of “operate,” the Court resolved the ambiguity of the usage of the term (invoking Chevron) by affirming the agency’s interpretation was “a permissible construction of the statute.”

- The Gorsuch Dissent : The Gorsuch dissent in TransAm Trucking is striking for the smug, pedantic, patronizing, and gratuitous (yet labored) endeavour to undermine (if not strip away altogether) the “reasonable person” and “permissible construction” foundations of the opinion (one can easily see why his Supreme Court colleagues may regard Gorsuch as a smarty-pants). Here is the gist of the dissent. For the Court, according to Gorsuch, it is irrelevant whether the TransAm termination decision was “wise” or “kind.” The Court’s only concern is whether the termination decision was illegal. The trucker did not “refuse to operate” his vehicle. He unambiguously “operated” the vehicle even when instructed not to do so. “And there’s simply no law … giving employees the right to operate their vehicles in ways their employers forbid.”...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/neil-gorsuch-and-the-case-of-the-frozen-truck-driver_b_5a12cc7ee4b0e6450602ecc1
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- COVID, flu, polio - what's the difference?
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- 'Gorsuch unmasked? Argues COVID is no big deal, flu kills 100s of 1000s of people every year.' Daily Kos, 1.7.22.

According to www.washingtonpost.com/…, “conservative Supreme Court justices on Friday appeared skeptical that the Biden administration has legal authority to impose a broad vaccination-or-testing requirement on large employers, casting doubt on President Biden’s most ambitious plan to fight the pandemic.

But there was a different reaction to the administration’s vaccine mandate for health-care personnel that receive federal Medicaid and Medicare funds. Some of the justices who expressed doubt about the general workplace requirements seemed more receptive to the idea that health-care workers could be required to get vaccinated.”

Some of this is not unexpected from the conservative Supreme Court justices, who had no problems with expanded Executive powers during the trump administration, but who now sing a very different tune.
But Justice Gorsuch drew a lot of attention and raised eyebrows today, for two reasons —

He did not wear a mask to court, when other justices and attending reporters and attorneys did.

> He falsely argued that "the flu kills hundreds of thousands of people every year" as a way to downplay COVID...

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/1/7/2073383/-Gorsuch-unmasked-Argues-that-COVID-is-no-big-deal-flu-kills-100s-of-1000s-of-people-every-year

[Scrivener7]

1. I'm sorry, this man is a complete moron.

The other day he was talking about how hundreds of thousands die of the flu every year.

[appalachiablue]

6. 100s of thousands dying of flu, like 1918. Who's he fooling?

[Casady1]

2. This is typical

of most of the ivy educated big law firm Supreme court justices. These big firms defend corporations.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. Maybe he should drive a truck for a year?

White collar workers, and most especially people like lawyers, have no clue what it's like out there for the blue collar folks.

I've long thought that every single person should have to spend a year working retail, or food service, or as an airline ticket agent, or any one of the many jobs out there where the employee has no control over the working conditions and is expected to be polite and cheerful at all times.

[appalachiablue]

5. +++ Drive a truck, in dangerous conditions; serve food

to unpleasant people, assist and wait on rude, obnoxious customers. An education in reality!!

I've known truck drivers and many blue collar workers who are extremely skilled, intelligent and possessed of strengths I wish I had.

[monkeyman1]

4. needs to have a piss test ?

[madaboutharry]

7. I so loathe smug pretentious people.

Gorsuch is a snob. He has this “I’m a prince” vibe about him that is off putting. He looks down on the very people whose rights the Supreme Court should be protecting.

[BeckyDem]

8. Gorsuch: The highly educated degenerate.

Opinion: The Supreme Court isn’t well. The only hope for a cure is more justices.


By Nancy Gertner
and
Laurence H. Tribe

December 9, 2021 at 5:01 p.m. EST

Nancy Gertner is a retired U.S. District Court judge. Laurence H. Tribe is Carl M. Loeb University Professor emeritus and professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School. Both served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/09/expand-supreme-court-laurence-tribe-nancy-gertner/