In the United States, antitrust law is a collection of mostly federal laws that regulate the conduct and organization of businesses to promote competition and prevent unjustified monopolies. The three main U.S. antitrust statutes are the Sherman Act of 1890, the Clayton Act of 1914, and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914. These acts serve three major functions. First, Section 1 of the Sherman Act prohibits price fixing and the operation of cartels, and prohibits other collusive practices that unreasonably restrain trade. Second, Section 7 of the Clayton Act restricts the mergers and acquisitions of organizations that may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly. Third, Section 2 of the Sherman Act prohibits monopolization.
United States labor law sets the rights and duties for employees, labor unions, and employers in the US. Labor law's basic aim is to remedy the "inequality of bargaining power" between employees and employers, especially employers "organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association". Over the 20th century, federal law created minimum social and economic rights, and encouraged state laws to go beyond the minimum to favor employees. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 requires a federal minimum wage, currently $7.25 but higher in 29 states and D.C., and discourages working weeks over 40 hours through time-and-a-half overtime pay. There are no federal laws, and few state laws, requiring paid holidays or paid family leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 creates a limited right to 12 weeks of unpaid leave in larger employers. There is no automatic right to an occupational pension beyond federally guaranteed Social Security, but the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 requires standards of prudent management and good governance if employers agree to provide pensions, health plans or other benefits. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 requires employees have a safe system of work.
Resale price maintenance (RPM) or, occasionally, retail price maintenance is the practice whereby a manufacturer and its distributors agree that the distributors will sell the manufacturer's product at certain prices, at or above a price floor or at or below a price ceiling. If a reseller refuses to maintain prices, either openly or covertly, the manufacturer may stop doing business with it. Resale price maintenance is illegal in many jurisdictions.
The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) is an administrative appellate body within the Executive Office for Immigration Review of the United States Department of Justice responsible for reviewing decisions of the U.S. immigration courts and certain actions of U.S. Citizenship Immigration Services, U.S Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The BIA was established in 1940 after the Immigration and Naturalization Service was transferred from the United States Department of Labor to the Department of Justice.
Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe, 401 U.S. 402 (1971), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that established the basic legal framework for judicial review of the actions of administrative agencies. It substantially narrowed the Administrative Procedure Act's Section 701(a)(2) exception from judicial review. It also stands as a notable example of the power of litigation by grassroots citizen movements to block government action.
Heckler v. Chaney, 470 U.S. 821 (1985), is a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States which ruled that a federal agency's decision to not take an enforcement action is presumptively unreviewable by the courts under section 701(a)(2) of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The case rose out of a petition to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by a group of death row inmates, who sought to have the agency act against the states' plan to execute them by lethal injection. The FDA declined to interfere, asserting that it had no jurisdiction and would choose not to act even if it did. The inmates appealed the refusal to U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who gave summary judgment to the FDA on the grounds that the nonenforcement action was unreviewable. The petitioners then appealed the summary judgment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, asserting that the FDA's action was reviewable and ruling it to be "arbitrary and capricious". The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the appeals court and declared in an 8–1 decision that agency nonenforcement decisions were presumptively unreviewable.
Stanton v. Stanton, 421 U.S. 7 (1975), is a United States Supreme Court case which struck down Utah's definitions of adulthood as a violation of equal protection: females reached adulthood at 18; males at 21.
Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528 (1985), is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court held that the Congress has the power under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution to extend the Fair Labor Standards Act, which requires that employers provide minimum wage and overtime pay to their employees, to state and local governments. In this case, the Court overruled its previous decision in National League of Cities v. Usery, in which the Court had held that regulation of the activities of state and local governments "in areas of traditional governmental functions" would violate the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U.S. 134 (1944), is a United States Supreme Court decision holding that an administrative agency's interpretative rules deserve deference according to their persuasiveness. The court adopted a case-by-case test, which considers the rulings, interpretations, and opinions of the administrator. The Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case for further proceedings.
Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U.S. 723 (1975), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which ruled that only those suffering direct loss from the purchase or sale of stock had standing to sue under federal securities law. The Court noted that under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, derivative investors are considered buyers or sellers of securities for application of SEC Rule 10b-5.
Samantar v. Yousuf, 560 U.S. 305 (2010), is a decision by the United States Supreme Court concerning whether Muhammad Ali Samatar, prime minister of Somalia from 1987 to 1990, could be sued in United States courts for allegedly overseeing killings and other atrocities. Samatar then lived in Virginia, and some of his victims had sued him under the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991.
New Process Steel, L.P. v. NLRB, 560 U.S. 674 (2010), is a US labor law case of the United States Supreme Court holding that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) cannot make decisions without at least three members on a panel.
Clyde Wilson Summers was an American lawyer and educator who advocated for more democratic procedures in labor unions. He helped write the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 and was highly influential in the field of labor law, authoring more than 150 publications on the issue of union democracy alone. He was considered the nation's leading expert on union democracy. "What Louis Brandeis was to the field of privacy law, Clyde Summers is to the field of union democracy," wrote Widener University School of Law professor Michael J. Goldberg in the summer of 2010. "Summers, like Brandeis, provided the theoretical foundation for an important new field of law."
American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382 (1950), is a 5-to-1 ruling by the United States Supreme Court which held that the Taft–Hartley Act's imposition of an anti-communist oath on labor union leaders does not violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, is not an ex post facto law or bill of attainder in violation of Article One, Section 10 of the United States Constitution, and is not a "test oath" in violation of Article Six of the Constitution.
Twentieth Century Music Corp v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151 (1975), was an important decision of the United States Supreme Court, out of the Third Circuit, that questioned whether the reception of a copyrighted song on a radio broadcast constitutes a copyright violation if the copyright owner has only licensed the broadcaster to "perform the composition publicly for profit".
Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, 594 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case involving eminent domain and labor relations. In its decision, the Court held that a regulation made pursuant to the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act that required agricultural employers to allow labor organizers to regularly access their property for the purposes of union recruitment constituted a per se taking under the Fifth Amendment. Consequently, the regulation may not be enforced unless “just compensation” is provided to the employers.
Train v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 421 U.S. 60 (1975), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the EPA must approve a State Implementation Plan if it meets the criteria under the Clean Air Act.
