Wachtell Lipton: The Supreme Court’s Business Docket: October 2024 in Review
By Lawdragon News | July 18, 2025 | Press Releases, Wachtell Lipton News
Following on the heels of last year’s blockbuster Term, the Supreme Court recently concluded another of equal consequence. But even as the Court grappled with contentious issues ranging from birthright citizenship to the process owed deportees, it also issued significant rulings on matters pertinent to the business community. In particular, the Court continued its recent trend of shaping commercial law through precise statutory interpretation and implementing of checks on the scope and power of the administrative state. Its rulings conveyed that, at least across the business and regulatory landscape, interpretative restraint will continue to guide the Court’s decision-making.
Below, we summarize the key business decisions from this Term and note important cases on the Court’s business docket to watch in the coming Term.
1. Mass Torts. In Medical Marijuana, Inc. v. Horn, a five-Justice majority held that plaintiffs may seek treble damages under the federal civil RICO statute where personal injuries result in business or property loss. Justice Barrett’s majority opinion relied on a close, textual analysis of the RICO statute to conclude that its text does not foreclose recovery for such injuries, resolving a widening circuit split. The Court’s ruling might presage further expansion of the use of civil RICO, incentivizing plaintiffs to convert state law personal injury claims that have any associated business or property loss into federal civil RICO claims with the potential for treble damages. Although plaintiffs must still satisfy RICO’s other requirements (including alleging a direct, causal relation between the injury and racketeering conduct and demonstrating a “pattern” of such conduct), the products liability bar may be drawn to the optics of bringing a civil RICO action, as well as the perceived settlement value of its treble-damages relief.
2. Employment Law. The Court continued its recent project of clarifying principles of antidiscrimination law in the employment context, this Term considering ‘reverse-discrimination’ in the workplace. Writing for a unanimous Court in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, Justice Jackson found that a plaintiff belonging to a majority group and alleging employment discrimination under Title VII cannot be required to satisfy a different, higher evidentiary standard than what a minority plaintiff must satisfy. Employers should anticipate heightened risks from majority-group plaintiffs filing claims under Title VII, including by those challenging DEI initiatives as unlawful discrimination. Overall, the decision underscores the importance of undertaking fresh reviews of antidiscrimination policies and programs to ensure compliance with the Court’s recent holdings in this area.
The Court’s jurisprudence in other areas of employment law proved a mixed bag for employers, despite perceptions of the Court as favorable to business interests. Some decisions were wins for employers, including Stanley v. City of Sanford, Florida, which limited the availability of ADA discrimination protections for certain retirees, and E.M.D. Sales v. Carrera, which rejected a heightened evidentiary standard for employers to prove that employees are exempt from minimum-wage and overtime-pay provisions of the FLSA. On the other side of the ledger, a unanimous Court held in Cunningham v. Cornell University that a plaintiff can state a claim under an ERISA provision that bars a plan fiduciary from knowingly causing a plan to engage in certain disallowed transactions simply by pleading a violation of that provision. The Cunningham ruling will almost certainly increase the number of these types of ERISA claims surviving the motion to dismiss stage. And it serves as a reminder that, as with Horn, the Court will hew to statutory text and structure, even where the result may burden businesses with protracted litigation and the expense of discovery.
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John F. Savarese |
