A sweeping new analysis says the nation’s highest court is tilting hard toward the wealthy. The New York Times reports that economists from Columbia and Yale found that republican appointees on the court are now choosing the richer side in 7 out of 10 cases.​

The “Ruling For the Rich” study examined every Supreme Court case involving economic issues since 1953. Researchers labeled rulings as “pro-rich” or “pro-poor” and discovered a sharp partisan split that has widened dramatically in recent decades.

​In the 1950s, justices from both political parties cast pro-rich votes at roughly similar rates, suggesting ideology mattered less than the facts of each case. Today, the gap is so large that the authors say simply following the money often predicts who will win, more reliably than lofty legal theories like originalism or textualism that conservative justices frequently invoke.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned in a scathing and powerful dissent last summer what many Americans have already believed: the court favors the rich and corporations over everyday people.

“This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this Court than ordinary citizens,” she said.

The new data backs her up, suggesting the court not only rules for the rich more often, but also gives them more chances to be heard while turning away cases brought by workers, criminal defendants, and people on death row.

For communities already hit hardest by economic inequality, the findings confirm what is no surprise. If the court’s job is to give “equal right to the poor and to the rich,” this study suggests the scale has been quietly tipping for generations, and that lean is now glaringly lopsided.