President Biden’s appointment of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court signals a shift in decision making on the court that will match or even exceed the liberal philosophy that characterized her predecessor, retiring justice Stephen Breyer. In her 8 years as a district court judge in the District Of Columbia her decisions were mostly favorable to progressive opinions regarding issues of economic and social justice. Such decisions included, but were not limited to, immigration, consumer safety and health, civil rights, and abuses of executive authority. Perhaps her most consequential decision involved the refusal of White House Counsel Don McGahn to testify at congressional hearings by House members investigating Donald Trump’s attempts to influence and obstruct justice with regard to investigations about Russian influence in the 2016 election, as well as Trump’s efforts to undermine support by Congress for the Ukrainian government in its struggle against Russian attacks on its sovereignty. McGahn justified his refusal to testify on grounds of executive privilege, and that Trump had the sole authority to decide whether he can testify or not. With her pronouncement that “Presidents are not Kings” she ruled that McGahn must testify. The issue was finally settled when McGahn gave testimony to House members, after Trump left office, in a closed-door session.

Of important interest and relevance to issues affecting economic justice for workers, in particular employees of the federal government, Judge Jackson ruled several times in favor of government workers whose bargaining rights and ability to determine working conditions became increasingly vulnerable to efforts by the Trump Administration to curtail, limit and even eliminate those protections entirely. In 2018, as a district judge in Washington, DC, Jackson invalidated three executive orders by the Trump Administration that compromised worker rights of federal employees. In AFL-CIO v. Trump, Jackson negated three executive orders that would have made collective bargaining significantly more difficult. The orders put limitations on the amount of time union representatives could spend meeting with workers, the right of workers to appeal disciplinary actions taken against them, and also limited the kinds of issues that labor union representatives can negotiate. Jackson argued that although the President had executive authority to issue orders relevant to federal labor-management relations, those orders cannot conflict with the will of Congress in its statutory role setting rules and regulations that pertain to collective bargaining and workers rights. She ruled in her decision that when such a conflict did occur the court had a right to intervene and resolve the conflict. In this instance she resolved the conflict in favor of the unions. Although Jackson’s decision was reversed upon appeal on jurisdictional grounds, one of the appellate judges who ruled against her decision, Republican Thomas Griffith, has enthusiastically endorsed her nomination to the Supreme Court, praising her “careful approach and agreeable manner”.

More recently, a few weeks before President Biden nominated Judge Jackson to the Supreme Court, she issued her first ruling as a member of the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District Of Columbia. In the case of American Federation of Government Employees v. Federal Labor Relations Authority, Jackson overturned the FLRA rule that limited workers rights to bargain collectively against working conditions. The Federal Labor Relations Authority is a semi-independent agency of the federal government whose mission is to facilitate and coordinate relationships between management and non-postal employees of the federal government. With her decision, Judge Jackson determined that new rules established by the FLRA put unfair and onerous restrictions on the collective bargaining rights of federal government employees to determine circumstances dictating workplace conditions. She also wrote that the new standards imposed by the FLRA on collective bargaining were arbitrary and capricious. She was joined in her opinion by judges Cornelia Pillard and David Tatel.

As judge on the District Court and Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Ketanji Brown Jackson has already made her impact felt on labor and management relations with her precedent setting rulings regarding attempts by Republican bosses at the federal level to eliminate protections and collective bargaining rights of government workers. In every decision she blocked Trump Administration managers from obstructing workers who wanted to bargain with management on the subject of working conditions. Judge Jackson’s decisions also protected the right of unions representing government employees to organize and bargain collectively on behalf of their membership. The precedents established by her rulings in AFL-CIO v. Trump and American Federation of Government Employees v. FLRA will help protect workers at the federal level and also state and local government employees as well.

Based on her decisions at the district court and appellate level, Ketanji Brown Jackson has proven beyond doubt that as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court she will be a forceful and tireless advocate on behalf of federal employees and collective bargaining rights of all workers, public and private.