Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stood alone in her dissent Thursday on a Supreme Court ruling that she said will limit the extent to which a union can strike.
The solo dissent was a first for the outspoken Biden-appointed justice, who wrote that the ruling would “erode the right to strike.” Jackson’s lone support for the labor issue put her at odds with the rest of the court — especially among its conservative justices, who wrote in the ruling’s footnote that siding with Jackson would make for “a good candidate for a quick return trip here.”
The case, which strikes down a ruling by the Washington Supreme Court, arose from a 2017 dispute between a Washington state concrete company and its drivers in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. When negotiations broke down, union members walked off the job with trucks full of wet cement — which can solidify and damage trucks if left alone for long.
The company, Glacier Northwest, sued the Teamsters over damages. The union said the strike was protected.
“Workers are not indentured servants, bound to continue laboring until any planned work stoppage would be as painless as possible for their master,” Jackson wrote.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion, saying the union members’ strike put the property of the company in “imminent danger.”
“The Union’s actions not only resulted in the destruction of all the concrete Glacier had prepared that day; they also posed a risk of foreseeable, aggravated, and imminent harm to Glacier’s trucks,” Barrett wrote in a decision joined by four other justices.
All eyes are on the court and the justices’ relationships with one another as it grapples with skepticism over its ethics and conduct. In particular, Justice Clarence Thomas has faced a wave of misconduct allegations stemming from gifts and favors he accepted from GOP megadonor Harlan Crow.
And while dissents such as Jackson’s are not uncommon, they paint a picture of the court’s complex dynamics in the current political landscape.
In the court’s high-profile April ruling ensuring temporary access to the abortion drug mifepristone, for instance, Justice Samuel Alito publicly dissented, writing an opinion in which he called out three justices by name. The opinion was an apparent act of judiciary “theater,” one constitutional law expert told Insider at the time.
Even liberal justices haven’t shied away from minor quarreling in their written opinions. Last month, Justice Elena Kagan traded barbs with Justice Sonia Sotomayor over a copyright case featuring a Prince portrait by Andy Warhol.
“There is precious little evidence in today’s opinion that the majority has actually looked at these images, much less that it has engaged with expert views of their aesthetics and meaning,” Kagan wrote.
The supreme court’s public information officer did not respond to Insider’s request for comment.
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