You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Sometimes, though, you can judge a defendant and plaintiff by the “friends of the court” who show up to back them.
So it went with the recent click-to-cancel ruling that set aside a Biden-era customer-friendly rule. On one side, we have interested parties voicing their support of Custom Alarm, including:
American Property Casualty Insurance Association;
Health & Fitness Association;
International Franchise Association;
National Association of Spa Franchises;
Service Contract Industry Council
While on the other side, in support of click-to-cancel, we find:
Internet and Consumer Law Professors;
Truth in Advertising, Inc.;
Consumer Law and Economic Justice;
Consumer Federation of America;
National Consumers League;
National Association of Consumer Advocates
Which side am I supposed to think is arguing for the best interests of the American consumer? It’s a riddle. Wouldn’t everyone prefer to wait on hold and then fend off last-ditch sales efforts from a real person paid to make life difficult instead of just clicking a button to quit paying for the USA Today?
But seriously, while I don’t like to spend much time complaining about the media, you’ve noticed how the ruling-related headlines (and even full articles) read like, “Court Strikes Down Click-To-Cancel Rule.” As if a court somewhere just woke up, read the paper, picked out a situation and decided to rule on it.
I wish the media would not obscure the fact that for this and frankly more important cases, meaningful laws and regulations get struck down BECAUSE SOMEONE(S) WENT TO COURT TO KILL THEM, and kept going to court until they succeeded.
Generally speaking, that someone is a business interest armed with a hefty legal budget and a determination to consider nothing but its bottom line. Too often, a reader is left with the impression that oh well, a court struck down something, while organized and powerful interests get to stroll back to the office tucked safely in the shadows beyond the reach of mediocre reporting.
Which makes it all the easier for the next batch of corporatists to mount its own attack against anything that tries to erode the longstanding advantage of corporate interest over common interests in this country.
Paying lawyers to persuade judges to make humans exert extra time and stress to jump through hoops to quit something they want to quit is no way to go through life. And yet business leaders who preach about efficiency everywhere else will spend whatever it takes to do exactly that.
The media also seem impervious to the history of Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act, which not one Republican then in Congress voted for.
But Republicans immediately filed to strike down the Medicaid expansion for the states, and the Supreme Court agreed: The Medicaid expansion unconstitutionally required the states to help implement the expansion by beginning with a 10%-90% state to federal cost of providing health care to the poorest residents. And Republican-dominated state legislatures refused the expansion when it became an option. Sure, people died or got sicker, but at least the states weren’t on the hook for helping them.
Many of those states subsequently passed ballot initiatives to opt in to Medicaid expansion, only to be betrayed by their Republican majority state legislatures, which refused to take “give us free money to care for our citizens” for an answer.
Medicaid expansion is just one example. When was the last time any major media outlet detailed the relentless Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act? Do they document the poorer health outcomes in Republican-dominated states? No, but there’s always air time and column space to tell the heart-warming story of some kid who sold off his stuffed animals to try to pay for expensive treatment for a classmate (or some other such soft-focus story pumped up as “this is how we help each other in America”).