In cases involving the nation’s largest private employer, Wal-Mart, and the nation’s second-largest cellphone company, AT&T Mobility, the court tightened the rules for class actions and made it easier for firms to do away with class actions entirely by using form contracts.
All of the decisions this term were scrutinized for clues about the arc of the Roberts court as it settles into a period of consolidation and awaits a series of colossal cases, notably the challenges to the health care law championed by President Obama. This term was significant, but the next one may include the most important clash between the Supreme Court and a president since the New Deal.
In the just-completed term, the court’s commitment to free speech and its growing business docket sometimes intersected, as in the cases on drug marketing and video games.
“For the conservatives,’’ said Lee Esptein, a professor of law and political science at Northwestern University, “the First Amendment continues to trump other values, especially if they can help business in the process.’’
On Monday the court agreed to hear another First Amendment case of interest to the business community, this one concerning the Federal Communications Commission’s broadcast indecency rules.
Business groups said their success in the court during the term was mixed, and the numbers support them, as the court often ruled for plaintiffs in employment and securities cases.
But business groups won the most consequential cases, including what a US Chamber of Commerce lawyer called “the triple crown of this year’s business docket.’’
The lawyer, Robin S. Conrad, executive vice president of the chamber’s litigation unit, was referring to the Wal-Mart and AT&T cases, along with one rejecting a suit from six states against several power companies over carbon dioxide emissions.
“These three cases,’’ she said, “were easily the most important business cases of the term.’’
