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A Court for the One Percent: How the Supreme Court Contributes to Economic Inequality Michele Gilman

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A Court for the One Percent: How the Supreme Court Contributes to Economic Inequality Michele Gilman Utah Law Review Volume 2014 | Number 3 Article 1 2014 A Court for the One Percent: How the Supreme Court Contributes to Economic Inequality Michele Gilman Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr Part of the Law and Economics Commons, and the Supreme Court of the United States Commons Recommended Citation Gilman, Michele (2014) "A Court for the One Percent: How the Supreme Court Contributes to Economic Inequality," Utah Law Review: Vol. 2014 : No. 3 , Article 1. Available at: https://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr/vol2014/iss3/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Utah Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Utah Law Review by an authorized editor of Utah Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A COURT FOR THE ONE PERCENT: HOW THE SUPREME COURT CONTRIBUTES TO ECONOMIC INEQUALITY Michele Gilman* This Article explores the United States Supreme Court’s role in furthering economic inequality. The Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 not only highlighted growing income and wealth inequality in the United States, but also pointed the blame at governmental policies that favor business interests and the wealthy due to their outsized influence on politicians. Numerous economists and political scientists agree with this thesis. However, in focusing ire on the political branches and big business, these critiques have largely overlooked the role of the judiciary in fostering economic inequality. The Court’s doctrine touches each of the major causes of economic inequality, which includes systemic failures of our educational system, a frayed social safety net, probusiness policies at the expense of consumers and employees, and the growing influence of money in politics. In each of these areas, the Court’s deference to legislative judgments is highly selective and driven by a class-blind view of the law that presumes that market-based results are natural, inevitable, and beneficial. For instance, the Court rejects government attempts to voluntarily desegregate schools, while deferring to laws that create unequal financing for poor school districts. The end result is that poor children receive subpar educations, dooming many of them to the bottom of the economic spectrum. Similarly, the Court overturned Congress’s attempt to rein in campaign financing, while upholding state voter identification laws that suppress the votes of the poor. These decisions distort the electoral process in favor of the wealthy. In short, the Court tends to defer to laws that create economic inequality, while striking down legislative attempts to level the playing field. While a popular conception of the Court is that it is designed to protect vulnerable minorities from majoritarian impulse, the Court, instead, is helping to protect a very powerful minority at the expense of the majority. This Article is one step toward understanding how law intertwines with politics and economics to create economic inequality. * © 2014 Michele Gilman. Professor of Law and Director, Civil Advocacy Clinic, Co-Director, Center on Applied Feminism, University of Baltimore School of Law. B.A. 1990, Duke University; J.D. 1993, University of Michigan Law School. Thanks to Wendy Bach, Garrett Epps, Gilda Daniels, Dan Hatcher, Rob Rubinson, and Erika Wilson for their feedback, as well as the participants at the Class Crits V conference at the University of Wisconsin School of Law. 389 390 UTAH LAW REVIEW [NO. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 391 I. ECONOMIC INEQUALITY AND OWS .................................................................. 394 A. The Rise of Economic Inequality ..................................................... 394 B. The Causes of Economic Inequality ................................................ 395 C. The Impacts of Economic Inequality ............................................... 398 II. THE SUPREME COURT AND ECONOMIC INEQUALITY ...................................... 401 A. Redistribution and the Social Safety Net ......................................... 401 1. The Constitution Does Not Create Social and Economic Rights ..................................................................................... 402 2. The Poor are Not a Suspect Class ............................................ 405 3. Class-based Distinctions Are Subject to Rational Basis Review ................................................................................... 410 B. Businesses and the Court ................................................................. 411 1. The Roberts Court .................................................................... 412 2. Under the Surface .................................................................... 414 3. Unions ...................................................................................... 418 C. Education ........................................................................................ 420 1. Desegregation .......................................................................... 423 2. School Financing ..................................................................... 429 3. Affirmative Action and Higher Education ................................ 432 D. Politics and Power .......................................................................... 434 1. Supreme Court Influence over Politics .................................... 434 2. Business Influence over Politics ............................................... 437 3. Declining Political Participation by the Poor ......................... 441 III. EXPLANATIONS AND SOLUTIONS ................................................................... 444 A. Explanations .................................................................................... 444 1. The Attitudinal Model............................................................... 445 2. The Public-Opinion Model ....................................................... 447 B. Solutions .......................................................................................... 450 1. A Legal Philosophy of Equality ................................................ 451 2. The Facts of Economic Inequality ............................................ 452 3. Coalitions for Economic Justice .............................................. 454 4. Multidimensional Strategies ..................................................... 457 5. Access to Justice ....................................................................... 461 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 462 2014] A COURT FOR THE ONE PERCENT 391 INTRODUCTION “You can have democracy in this country, or you can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but you cannot have both.” Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice1 The Occupy Wall Street protests that ignited on September 17, 2011, and flared throughout the fall and winter of 2011 may have flickered out, but Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and its call for greater economic fairness had a lasting impact.2 With its slogan of “We are the 99%,”3 OWS changed the national conversation about economic inequality. OWS shined a spotlight on the fact that the top 1% of households currently earns one-fifth of the nation’s income, 4 while owning over one-third of the nation’s wealth.5 Meanwhile, incomes for the other 99% are at their lowest point since 1997, and these Americans face less social mobility, rising unemployment, and job insecurity.6 Simultaneously, poverty rates have increased, and nearly one-third of all Americans have either fallen into poverty or live on 7 earnings that classify them as low income. These sobering facts undermine our 1 MARTIN GILENS, AFFLUENCE AND INFLUENCE: ECONOMIC INEQUALITY AND POLITICAL POWER IN AMERICA 1 (2012) (quoting Justice Brandeis). 2 See James Miller, Is Democracy Still in the Streets?, in THE OCCUPY HANDBOOK 173, 174 (Janet Byrne & Robin Wells eds., 2012). 3 Stephen Gandel, The Leaders of a Leaderless Movement, in WHAT IS OCCUPY? INSIDE THE GLOBAL MOVEMENT 34, 35 (Time Home Entm’t, Inc. ed., 2011). 4 Emmanuel Saez, Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States 3, 8 (Mar. 2, 2012), available at http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes- 2010.pdf (updated with 2009 and 2010 estimates) (updating the original version of Emmanuel Saez, Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States, PATHWAYS MAG., Winter 2008, at 6–7). 5 See Sylvia A. Allgretto, The State of Working America’s Wealth 2011: Through Volatility and Turmoil the Gap Widens 4 (Econ. Pol’y Inst., Briefing Paper No. 292, 2011), available at http://epi.3cdn.net/2a7ccb3e9e618f0bbc_3nm6idnax.pdf; Edward N. Wolff, Recent Trends in Household Wealth in the United States: Rising Debt and the Middle- Class Squeeze—an Update to 2007, at 11 (Levy Econ. Inst. of Bard Coll., Working Paper No. 589, 2010), available at http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_589.pdf. 6 See JACOB S. HACKER & PAUL PIERSON, WINNER-TAKE-ALL POLITICS: HOW WASHINGTON MADE THE RICH RICHER—AND TURNED ITS BACK ON THE MIDDLE CLASS 2–4 (2010) (describing impacts on the middle class); BENJAMIN I. PAGE & LAWRENCE R. JACOBS, CLASS WAR? 6 (2009) (noting that middle and lower income groups have faced wage losses and stagnation, while high-income earners have seen wage hikes); Rajan Reghuram, Inequality and Intemperate Policy, in THE OCCUPY HANDBOOK,
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