{"id":146,"date":"2026-06-03T21:38:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T21:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=146"},"modified":"2026-06-03T21:38:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T21:38:31","slug":"how-to-get-neil-gorsuch-to-stand-up-for-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=146","title":{"rendered":"How to Get Neil Gorsuch to Stand Up For Workers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

This is part of <\/em>Opinionpalooza<\/em>, Slate\u2019s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court. Keep up with all of our Supreme Court coverage and analysis by <\/em>signing up for weekly email roundups<\/em>. The best way to support our work\u2014and unlock exclusive legal analysis\u2014is by joining <\/em>Slate Plus<\/em>. (If you are already a member, consider a <\/em>donation<\/em> or <\/em>merch<\/em>!)<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Sonia Sotomayor Bluntly Exposed the Supreme Court\u2019s Latest Voting Rights Lie<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week, the Supreme Court delivered a resounding victory for workers in Flowers Foods Inc. v. Brock<\/em>, ruling that local delivery drivers cannot be forced into private arbitration for employment disputes. The Federal Arbitration Act requires federal courts to enforce arbitration agreements\u2014even those that employees are essentially forced to sign when accepting a job. Often, this means that workers must resolve employment disputes through individual arbitration processes, where the deck is stacked against workers, instead of going to court. These arbitration agreements also often prohibit workers from banding together in class-action lawsuits. But the FAA expressly excludes from arbitration \u201ccontracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.\u201d The Flowers Foods<\/em> decision was the latest in a series of cases in which the justices interpreted that exemption to broaden access to federal courts.<\/p>\n

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This opinion, like the one in a prior case called New Prime v. Oliveira<\/em>, was authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch. The opinions in both cases rely heavily on textual and historical analysis. And both arguably demonstrate the fruits of a litigation tool that Mark Joseph Stern years ago dubbed the \u201cGorsuch brief\u201d\u2014a brief making \u201ca highly technical argument designed to nab the justice\u2019s vote by fixating on the text of a statute and its meaning at the time of passage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gorsuch is an avowed textualist. He has constantly maintained that when jurists interpret statutes, words are to be given the meaning that an ordinary English speaker would have understood them to possess when Congress enacted the statute. So if the justice says he will follow the text wherever it leads, the progressive wager is that it sometimes leads to places that help workers. And that\u2019s the goal of a Gorsuch brief: hand him the raw materials of a textual and historical inquiry\u2014from dictionaries published around the year the statute was passed to court decisions of the same era and other documented history of how a phrase was actually used\u2014showing that the words of a statute favor a particular outcome.<\/p>\n

That strategy paid off in 2019, in New Prime v. Oliveira<\/em>. There, the court held that the FAA\u2019s exemption from arbitration for \u201ccontracts of employment\u201d covered not only employees but also independent contractors. In his opinion for the court, Gorsuch relied heavily on historical materials. He cited six dictionaries from 1925, the year the FAA was enacted, as well as contemporaneous statutes and rulings, to reason that the phrase \u201ccontract of employment\u201d was understood at the time to encompass \u201cwork agreements involving independent contractors.\u201d Because of New Prime<\/em>, contractors can now litigate their claims in federal court instead of being forced into private arbitration.<\/p>\n

Flowers Foods<\/em> is the latest case demonstrating the Gorsuch brief\u2019s potential for success. The case involved a \u201clast-mile delivery\u201d driver, Angelo Brock, who transported baked goods along the final leg of their journey from their origin in one state to their destination in another. Brock himself never crossed state borders. Nor did he drive or interact with a vehicle that had done so. He simply picked up goods from a warehouse in Colorado and delivered them to destinations within the state. When he sued Flowers Foods, alleging that the company had underpaid him in violation of various federal and state laws, Flowers seized upon those facts to argue that Brock was not \u201cengaged in \u2026 interstate commerce\u201d and could be forced into arbitration under the FAA. The case thus turned on the meaning of that phrase. Must a transportation worker like Brock himself cross state borders or directly interact with a vehicle that crosses state lines to be \u201cengaged in interstate commerce\u201d and thus exempt from arbitration?<\/p>\n

Read more The Supreme Court Just Transformed Its Horrible Voting Rights Ruling Into Something More Calamitous<\/a><\/p>\n

A unanimous court held that the text included no such requirement. In his opinion for the court, Gorsuch relied heavily on dictionaries and cases published around the time the FAA was enacted. Quoting the definitions of engaged<\/em> and interstate commerce<\/em> from Black\u2019s Law Dictionary<\/em> and Webster\u2019s Dictionary<\/em>, he explained that \u201cnothing in those terms requires an individual to cross state lines or interact with a vehicle that does.\u201d Referencing the Cyclopedic Law Dictionary<\/em>, he asserted that an interstate journey involves not just crossing state lines. Though \u201ca continuous carriage\u201d may begin in one state and end in another, he noted, \u201cmuch of the journey\u201d can take place \u201cwithin the limits of a single state,\u201d like Brock\u2019s last-mile deliveries here.<\/p>\n

Gorsuch next turned to Supreme Court cases from that era. In an 1871 decision called The Daniel Ball<\/em>, the court had held that a steamboat was \u201cengaged in commerce between the States\u201d even though it never left Michigan, because it carried goods bound to or arriving from other states. That case, Gorsuch reasoned, was on point here: It foreclosed Flowers\u2019 rule that workers needed to cross state lines or interact with vehicles traveling across borders to engage in interstate commerce. And Gorsuch relied on several other cases too, including one in which a Pennsylvania salesman who picked up groceries shipped from out of state at a railroad depot and delivered them to their final destination was \u201cengaged in interstate commerce,\u201d even though there was no indication that he ever left Pennsylvania or interacted with vehicles that had.<\/p>\n

These contemporaneous dictionaries and historical cases did not materialize for the first time in the court\u2019s opinion. They were core to the argument that , and were set out in detail in amicus briefs, including one that the Constitutional Accountability Center of Brock. The briefs walked through the same FAA-era dictionaries the court ultimately relied on. They also traced how courts in the early 20th<\/sup> century read the identical phrase engaged in interstate commerce<\/em>, when used in other statutes, to hold that workers handling the local leg of a longer interstate shipment were engaged in that commerce. That same understanding, the brief argued, was captured in the FAA in 1925. The court thought so too.<\/p>\n

To be sure, Flowers Foods<\/em> leaves open other issues about the scope of the FAA\u2019s exemption that may reach the court one day. And it does not mean that the Gorsuch brief will always lead to progressive victories, either in arbitration or on other issues. But the repeated success of the Gorsuch brief does lay out a real, repeatable path for progressive advocates to win conservative votes at this Supreme Court\u2014one that traces the justice\u2019s own stated methodological commitments. When the original meaning of a statute favors progressive outcomes, the Gorsuch brief invites the justices to take to the ground they say they stand on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Spencer Pratt Built a Movement. Democrats Helped Him Do It.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, the Supreme Court delivered a resounding victory for workers in Flowers Foods Inc. v. 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