Republicans In Congress Want To Crack Down On Class-Action Lawsuits

The law, if passed, “will eviscerate class actions, which are often the only avenue for Americans to hold corporations accountable if they are victims of widespread illegal behavior,” wrote Linda Lipsen, CEO of the American Association for Justice, a national plaintiff lawyer association.

“If this bill becomes law, it will deny justice to Americans who suffer from financial fraud and deceptive scams, massive civil and human rights violations, or unsafe products and toxic workplaces that cause horrific injuries and deaths.”

In a letter to the Judiciary Committee, Cardozo School of Law professor Myriam Gilles wrote that the bill would “radically restrict access to justice for injured consumers, employees and small businesses” by imposing requirements that are “both unrealistic and unnecessary.”

Gilles cited “protecting defendants’ interests” as the presumed logic of the bill and said, “Even anecdotally, I am aware of no evidence — or serious scholarship — suggesting that courts have been lax in safeguarding defendants’ interests.”

Changing class-action rules is one of many efforts by the Republican majority in Congress that seem likely to satisfy the party’s corporate base, which spent much of the Obama era decrying increased regulation of businesses.

Other such changes being pushed include reversing rules on federal contractors who have a history of labor violations, on overdraft fees applied to prepaid debit cards, and many other regulations finalized in the last year of the Obama administration, which can be quickly reversed via a fast-track process.

On Tuesday, President Trump signed one regulatory reversal into law, approving legislation that eliminated a requirement for energy companies to disclose all payments made to foreign governments.

“This is a big signing, a very important signing,” Trump said at the time. “And this is H.J. Resolution 41, disapproving the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rule on disclosure of payments by resource extraction issuers. It’s a big deal.”