Supreme Court not split on business cases

Court watchers note that the agreement on business cases is occurring even as the Supreme Court has become more divided. The number of 5-4 rulings jumped to 24 in the most recent term, up from 11 in the previous sitting, according to a tally by Goldstein’s law firm Akin Gump.

“The ideological lines are sharper now than they have been in 20 years,” Goldstein said.

Yet while business cases made up almost half the court’s docket, they accounted for less than a third of the court’s 5-4 rulings.

Even cases that have provoked considerable rancor in the business world have been decided by lopsided votes.

Business groups staked out opposing sides in a key patent case that practitioners in the field said was one of the most important in decades. The case focused on when an invention is obvious and therefore not eligible for a patent.

Groups representing high-technology companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. supported a tightening of patent standards, while pharmaceutical and industrial firms such as Johnson & Johnson and General Electric Co. advocated for the status quo.

But the justices decided the case unanimously, along the lines supported by the high-tech companies, ruling that a lower court had made it too easy to obtain a patent for inventions that didn’t deserve one.

Similarly, a separate patent case pitting Microsoft against AT&T Inc. was decided 7-1.

(MSNBC.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal News.)

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted the trend in remarks June 9 in Bolton Landing, N.Y.

“As usual, we disagreed less often and less intensely in cases falling on the business side of our docket,” she said.

Some business cases have divided the court along ideological lines, such as a 5-4 ruling in May against a female employee of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. who had alleged pay discrimination. That case, however, also focused on civil rights law.

The court ruled against corporate America in just two cases, both dealing with the environment.

In one high-profile ruling in April, the court authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to treat greenhouse gases like other pollutants. In another case involving Duke Energy Corp., the court sided with environmental groups in a unanimous decision that strengthened rules requiring utilities to add modern pollution controls when they upgrade their plants.

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