Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every
Speaker 1: day we bring you insight and analysis into the most
Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more
Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud
Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. The Supreme Court
Speaker 1: is back in session today with Apple and iPhone apps.
Speaker 1: The first order of business this morning. Here to tell
Speaker 1: us about it is Greg Store, Bloomberg, new Supreme Court reporter. So, Greg,
Speaker 1: consumers want to sue Apple, saying it's using its dominance
Speaker 1: in the market to jack up the prices for iPhone apps.
Speaker 1: What's the issue with that lawsuit, Julie. The issue is
Speaker 1: that the Supreme Court has said in previous cases that
Speaker 1: the only one who can sue under federal antrust law
Speaker 1: is the direct purchaser of something. And this lawsuit focuses,
Speaker 1: at least in part on the commissions that Apple charges
Speaker 1: to the developers. Those are UM and UH. The consumers
Speaker 1: say those are higher than they should be if there
Speaker 1: were a true competition here, and so Apple's argument is
Speaker 1: that the consumers are not the direct purchasers of UH.
Speaker 1: These the distribution services that the commissions pay for. They say,
Speaker 1: the only one who can sue us for having allegedly
Speaker 1: too high commissions are the app developers, not the consumers.
Speaker 1: And what does what does the consumer groups say? Well,
Speaker 1: the consumers say that we ultimately end up paying the
Speaker 1: cost of the commissions through higher app prices. And they
Speaker 1: also say that the case is not just about the commissions,
Speaker 1: It's about Apple's total control of the system for buying apps.
Speaker 1: They say, Look, if you're gonna, if you have an iPhone,
Speaker 1: you want to buy an app, the only place you
Speaker 1: can go is the app store, and Apple at the
Speaker 1: app Store has some control over the prices that that
Speaker 1: developers can charge. They are charged in UH amounts ending
Speaker 1: in ninety nine or a dollar ninety nine or two
Speaker 1: UM and uh. The consumers say that that overall control
Speaker 1: is enough that that uh it feels like you are
Speaker 1: buying the app from app directly from Apple uh and
Speaker 1: therefore we should be allowed to sue Apple for inflated prices.
Speaker 1: So antitrust cases sometimes not always, but sometimes divide the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court along ideological lines. What can you glean from
Speaker 1: the justices questions this morning? So this one sort of
Speaker 1: divided them along ideological lines. If the four liberal justices
Speaker 1: all seemed like they were varying kind to let this
Speaker 1: lawsuit go forward, uh, Justice Kavana, the newest judge, justice,
Speaker 1: might join them in that. And then you had two
Speaker 1: of the more conservative justices, Gorsu and Alito, and they
Speaker 1: were asking a much bigger question. Uh. Justice Corsue in
Speaker 1: particular was suggesting that he doesn't like this direct purchase
Speaker 1: or requirement at all, and he would consider throwing out
Speaker 1: the ninety seven Supreme Court ruling that that imposed the
Speaker 1: direct purchaser requirement. If the court were to go that route,
Speaker 1: the consumers would be allowed to to move forward with
Speaker 1: their suits. So you could end up with kind of
Speaker 1: a combination of rationales for letting this lawsuit go forward.
Speaker 1: So we're the justices up to date on the tech
Speaker 1: aspects of this, because sometimes in these arguments they're a
Speaker 1: little behind the curve. Yeah, there weren't any any of
Speaker 1: those moments where you're like, Wow, they really don't understand
Speaker 1: what's going on here. One justice who tends to be
Speaker 1: one of the more tech savvy justices, Justice Kagan uh
Speaker 1: did talk about the process of buying an app on
Speaker 1: her iPhone as She talked about when I, you know,
Speaker 1: buy something, I'm paying you know, I go to the
Speaker 1: app store, I'm paying for it using my Apple I
Speaker 1: D and the credit card information stored there. So she
Speaker 1: seemed to be speaking from personal experience in doing that. UH.
Speaker 1: For the most part, the other questions didn't get too
Speaker 1: deeply into the actual operation of smartphones. Tell us the
Speaker 1: effect of a broad ruling in this case versus a
Speaker 1: limited ruling, how many companies might it affect? So there
Speaker 1: are a lot of companies in this uh, this internet
Speaker 1: economy um uh, an awful lot of companies like eBay,
Speaker 1: like et Sea, like Amazon serve as kind of the middleman.
Speaker 1: They have a marketplace. UM. The consumers suing Apple say,
Speaker 1: you don't have to get into the way those companies work,
Speaker 1: because Apple is so different in the amount of control
Speaker 1: it exercises over the app store. But it's at least
Speaker 1: possible that a decision letting this lawsuit go forward could
Speaker 1: make it easier for consumers trying to sue at least
Speaker 1: some of those other companies, especially the ones that do
Speaker 1: exercise a lot of control over the marketplaces they run.
Speaker 1: Let's turn to certain requests the Justice Department is once
Speaker 1: again trying to jump over the Circuit Court of Appeals
Speaker 1: and asking the court to review President's Trump's ban on
Speaker 1: military service by transgender people. Tell us about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is a policy that the Trump administration has
Speaker 1: tried to put in place, but several federal district judges
Speaker 1: have blocked them from barring service by transgender people. And
Speaker 1: the Trump administration has said, we need to get this
Speaker 1: issue resolved very quickly, so they filed uh petitions here
Speaker 1: at the Supreme Court on Friday, uh saying, don't even
Speaker 1: bother waiting for the appeals court to rule. We think
Speaker 1: you should take it up now so that you can
Speaker 1: rule this term and and tell us by by June
Speaker 1: of next year whether we can indeed bar transgender people
Speaker 1: from serving in the military. How likely is it that
Speaker 1: the Court would grant certain that case and and avoid
Speaker 1: the Circuit Court. Well, I mean, we're speculating here, but
Speaker 1: that's a highly, highly unusual thing for the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: to do. It almost always wants the lower courts to
Speaker 1: fully vet an issue and certainly having the federal appeals
Speaker 1: courts rule on it for they take it up. On occasion,
Speaker 1: the Court will do that if there's a special urgency
Speaker 1: for something, or if maybe they're already considering related to
Speaker 1: in a separate case and they and they just want
Speaker 1: to broaden what they're thinking about. UM. You know, it
Speaker 1: would be an extraordinary thing for the Supreme Court to do,
Speaker 1: especially given that so far the Court has suggested it
Speaker 1: wants to step carefully and move slowly when it comes
Speaker 1: to some of these centerpiece issues, uh, pushed by the
Speaker 1: Trump administration. Speaking of extraordinary things at the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: I have to ask you about the Chief Justice pushing
Speaker 1: back on the President's criticisms of judges appointed by former
Speaker 1: President Barack Obama. How out of character was that for
Speaker 1: the Chief It is extremely out of character. He has
Speaker 1: talked about, uh, the importance of an independent judiciary. He
Speaker 1: has said that repeatedly. He has said that he doesn't
Speaker 1: view judges as being partisan actors. They're not Republican judges
Speaker 1: or democratic judges. He said that all before. But this
Speaker 1: came in response to a question from an Associated Press
Speaker 1: reporter asking whether the Chief Justice want to respond to
Speaker 1: the President's criticism of the Federal District Judge and the
Speaker 1: Federal Appeals Court. And so the Chief Justice put out
Speaker 1: a statement, and that is something that he has never done.
Speaker 1: It is uh, it is John Roberts standing up to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump in a way that he hasn't before. And
Speaker 1: it is certainly a fascinating dynamic that we're going to
Speaker 1: be watching while the Supreme Court considers all these hot
Speaker 1: button Trump administration appeals. Only that a minute here, Greg,
Speaker 1: what do you think it was that led him to
Speaker 1: make that statement? You know it again, we're getting a
Speaker 1: little bit in the speculation. But the President uses the
Speaker 1: phrase Obama judge to describe this, this federal district judge
Speaker 1: who who ruled against the administration on an asylum issue.
Speaker 1: That is a characterization that John Roberts really resists. Um uh.
Speaker 1: He certainly understands that that. You know, judges come to
Speaker 1: the court with different views. But this is a guy who,
Speaker 1: in his confirmation hearing said judges should be like umpires.
Speaker 1: He does not believe they should be affiliated with the
Speaker 1: president who appointed them in the way the President suggested.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks so much, Greg for your insights. That's
Speaker 1: Greg stores Bloomberg, new Supreme Court reporter. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to the Bloomberg Law podcast. You can subscribe and listen
Speaker 1: to the show on Apple podcast, SoundCloud, and on bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brasso, this is Bloomberg. Yeah,