The Department of Justice has basically denied songwriters a living wage from their hard work.
Yuck. There is some light at the end of this tunnel, I don’t see a lot of it.
This is administrative law. Admin rulings like this can be appealed at the District Court level, but not for content per se; only for abuse of power. Since there is 60-year-old precedent in place, and since federal courts are all about precedent, it will (not “would”; “will”) take a really good litigator to convince the judge to rule against the DOJ (that’s not me; I’m a transactionalist). Once it’s in the court system, it can proceed through the appeals process like any other case.
Even though I am not a litigator, it’s always fun to do some backseat driving in cases like this. I’d do a bit of forum shopping before I would take this to the District Court. Whoever brings the admin appeal to the District Court should be sure to bring it in either the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (that court is king of copyright and performing arts) or in the US District Court that covers L.A. and Hollywood (that court is the other king of performing arts). That shouldn’t be a tough one; songwriters live in droves in those places. The lawyer would just need a local client to bring this to the attention of one (or both) of those two courts. If it gets brought in both places (two different plaintiffs), hope to God the rulings disagree with each other. That makes the appeal easier to get through the chinks, especially if they appeal to the 2nd and 9th Circuits and those rulings disagree. That could turn it into a SCOTUS case … if SCOTUS grants certiorari. That’s a big “if.”