NEW YORK, Nov 26 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Wednesday granted Amazon.com (AMZN.O) a preliminary injunction to block the New York State Public Employment Relations Board from enforcing a new state law that the online retailer considers an attempt to illegally regulate private-sector labor relations.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Eric Komitee in Brooklyn was the first test of a state law allowing the employment agency known as PERB to hear private-sector labor cases while its federal counterpart, the National Labor Relations Board, lacked the necessary quorum to make rulings.
Amazon and its lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment ahead of the Thanksgiving Day holiday. The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, which represented PERB, did not immediately respond to similar requests.
Signed by Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul on September 5, the New York law was a response to a backlog of hundreds of cases at the NLRB after Republican U.S. President Donald Trump fired Democratic board member Gwynne Wilcox in January.
California passed a similar law in October, and the NLRB has sued to strike down both states' laws.
Komitee, a Trump appointee, cited a 1959 U.S. Supreme Court precedent in concluding that Amazon would likely succeed on its claim that federal labor law forbade New York from enforcing...
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