The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), the group that led the first Supreme Court challenge to Obamacare, has come out against President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.
In the NFIB's view, Merrick Garland is not as moderate as he appears to be because labor and environmental groups are occasionally victorious in his court rooms.
“He is quantifiably biased in favor of regulatory agencies and against private sector businesses,” said NFIB president and CEO Juanita Duggan. [...]
“There is nothing ‘moderate’ about Judge Garland’s record,” said Duggan. “In most of the cases in which Garland sided with a private party, he was ruling in favor of a labor union, an environmental group, or an employee seeking some sort of punitive action against another private party. The bottom line is that private businesses are almost always a loser in Merrick Garland’s court.”
Can we just take a moment to appreciate how hilariously absurd this is?
To you and I or anyone reading this, these probably aren't bad things. In the NFIB's bizarro world, however, it disqualifies Merrick Garland.
We haven't seen a great deal of attacks on Garland's record or qualifications because there's evidently not much to go on. Even the NFIB's hilarious critique hardly seems substantive. To say that Garland typically rules in favor of labor or environmental groups tells us nothing if we don't know the unique circumstances of each case.
The NFIB appears to be unconcerned with the exact circumstances of the cases they've referenced, only that he ruled in a way they generally don't approve of.
Not that it was their intention, but this is less of an attack on Garland and more of a case for Garland.
The NFIB has apparently never done this in their 73-year history. Maybe their abstinence was for the best.