Federal judge throws out U.S. ban on noncompetes
A federal court in Texas has thrown out the government’s ban on noncompete agreements that was set to take effect September 4.
In her ruling, Judge Ada Brown of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas wrote that the federal agency had overstepped its power when it approved the ban.
"The FTC lacks substantive rulemaking authority with respect to unfair methods of competition," she wrote. "The role of an administrative agency is to do as told by Congress, not to do what the agency think[s] it should do.”
20 replies
I know the guy who brought this suit personally. Damn near worked for him years ago. What a dick. His entire business, hundreds of millions of dollars, is shady as fuck.
Another domino from the Chevron decision falls.
I still predict that the entire tax code will be up next as it's driven by regulations written by the department of the Treasury. You know, a federal agency, and those no longer have any legal authority.
Department of Treasury has less power than my local Lions Club. It's insane.
This guy? https://ryan.com/about-ryan/leadership/brint-ryan/
Huh?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trade_Commission_Act_of_1914
https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/statutes/federal-trade-commission-act
The literal text of the FTC Act says:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-388/uslm/COMPS-388.xml
They are doing exactly what Congress told them to do.
Just the begining after striking down Chevron Deference. Sure, common sense says that is well within the purview of the FTC granted by Congress. But now, without chevron in place, the court is going to say anything that is not word for word directed by congress, is outside of an agency's jurisdiction.
While we're on the same side here and you're otherwise right, it WAS word for word directed by Congress!
There's literally no possible reading of the FTC Act passed by Congress that doesn't explicitly and word for word say the exact opposite of what this brains replaced with bribes fucking kangaroo court says in this gargantuan miscarriage of justice!
Yeah, that was my take too. The language in the Act seems pretty straightforward to me, and the judge's statement seems to directly contradict it (but IANAL).
Maybe he's trying to split hairs over the FTC not having direction to regulate how employers deal with employees, and saying that doesn't fall under "commerce"?
Probably, but that's still absolute lunacy from the standard of objective reality and probably shaky as hell from a purely legal one too.
Might as well have ruled that the IOC aren't allowed to make decisions regarding the Olympics for all the sense this makes 🤦
You're absolutely right, it's absurd and that's the point. For the GOP court to say the FTC can do that, they will expect Congress to pass a law saying "the FTC has the authority to ban non-compete agreements of every kind" but that's dumb and defeats the purpose of executive agencies, we agree. But that's the point. Congress will rarely if ever be that specific, so anyone can argue a law is not what they meant and the agencies have no deference.
The end goal is agencies are powerless and Congress is paralyzed, so the judiciary has all of the authority to decide what everything means.
The supreme Court overturned Chevron. There will be more things just like this as a result. They arbitrarily stripped a ton of power from regulators.
Words mean whatever the people in powersay they mean, and unless and until the rest of us are sick enough to actually do something about it... Well... Nothing changes if you don't do something different.
Welp, now we know what angle the right-wing shitheads and the lower court assclowns had been cooking up. We need to win Congress as well as the White House in November, or else this shit is going to drag on for decades with states trying to battle federal regulations of any kind.
I didn't even need to click into this to know it was going to be the 5th Circuit Judge shopping bullshit fucking up the system yet again.
Trump judge?
Trump judge
A reminder that regardless of this absurdly bad federal ruling, noncompete clauses are still unenforceable in California. So at least 40 million-ish of us are safe.
Just wait. I'm sure Ken Paxton will sue California in the fifth circuit.
Everytime I hear his name he's actively trying to make America a worse place to live.
I no Paxton fan. Not even a little.
That GM lawsuit... That one's worthy.
one step forward, three steps back
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