Billionaires Know Just How They Want Supreme Court Justices to Rule—and Are Spending Big to Tell Them

Last June, the Supreme Court gave a gift to the fossil fuel industry, whose proceeds have not only lined the pockets of some of the United States’ wealthiest men, but which those men have in turn invested in the creation of a right-wing Supreme Court. In Diamond Alternative Energy v. EPA, seven justices made it easier for the industry to sue the government over regulations it dislikes, granting polluters access to the courts that the justices have routinely denied to ordinary Americans.
In a dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson didn’t let the apparent bias go unnoted. “The Constitution does not distinguish between plaintiffs whose claims are backed by the Chamber of Commerce and those who seek to vindicate their rights,” Jackson wrote. “But if someone reviewing our case law harbored doubts about that proposition, today
... show moreBillionaires Know Just How They Want Supreme Court Justices to Rule—and Are Spending Big to Tell Them

Last June, the Supreme Court gave a gift to the fossil fuel industry, whose proceeds have not only lined the pockets of some of the United States’ wealthiest men, but which those men have in turn invested in the creation of a right-wing Supreme Court. In Diamond Alternative Energy v. EPA, seven justices made it easier for the industry to sue the government over regulations it dislikes, granting polluters access to the courts that the justices have routinely denied to ordinary Americans.
In a dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson didn’t let the apparent bias go unnoted. “The Constitution does not distinguish between plaintiffs whose claims are backed by the Chamber of Commerce and those who seek to vindicate their rights,” Jackson wrote. “But if someone reviewing our case law harbored doubts about that proposition, today’s decision will do little to dissuade them.”
The case was a sleepy one, obscured in the maelstrom of consequential end-of-term rulings. But the fossil fuel industry, the Chamber of Commerce, and dozens of ideological allies were well aware of the opportunity it presented. They had petitioned the court to take the case in an unusually high 13 amicus curiae, or friend of the court, briefs. Once the court accepted the case, the same slew of groups returned, filing new amicus briefs pushing the justices to bestow what amounted to a special privilege to a favored industry.
As Jackson warned, it’s hard to view it as a coincidence that a Supreme Court majority built on fossil fuel money went out of its way to help the industry. Indeed, the case is emblematic of a broader distortion of American law. Billionaires and the industries they run have a well-monied thumb on the scales of justice, an oligarchic influence operation that, among other tactics, funds a flood of amici to push the justices toward a preferred outcome. ...
Rest of article :motherjones.com/politics/2026/…
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