For the last five years, lower courts have been considering whether the powerful, politically connected financial institutions at the center of the Enron fraud will have to answer to investors for what they did. And now we have the final answer from the Supreme Court. They will not.

The Enron financial fraud cost America’s working families tens of billions of dollars in lost retirement assets. For thousands of Enron employees, whose 401-k plans were locked into Enron stock, the losses were personally catastrophic. At the center of the fraud were deals Enron did with major financial institutions, whose clear purpose was to hide the true state of Enron’s finances.

And the public will not even have the benefit of the Court explaining why because the Court simply refused to hear the case.

It is hard to reconcile the result in the Enron case with either the principles of substantive justice or the rule of law. But the decision not to hear a case that corporate big shots do not want heard fits very nicely with the overall direction of our legal system since Bush v. Gore.

Contact: Caren Benjamin (202) 637-5279