When President Trump removed Gwynne Wilcox from her seat on the National Labor Relations Board, he left the Board without a quorum. Since that time, the Board has been legally incapacitated: it cannot fulfill its statutory function of adjudicating unfair labor practice cases. At the time of Wilcox’ removal, I argued that by incapacitating the Board in this way, Trump may have suspended Garmon preemption – the doctrine that prohibits states and cities from regulating conduct that is either protected or prohibited by federal labor law.
Incapacitating the Board suspends Garmon preemption because Garmon preemption is all about deference to the administrative capacity of the Board. As the Supreme Court explained in an early case, labor preemption flows from the fact that when Congress passed the federal labor statute it “did not merely lay down a substantive rule of law to be enforced by any tribunal competent to apply law generally to the parties. It went on to confide primary interpretation and application of its rules to a specific and specially constituted tribunal:” the NLRB. Or as the Court wrote in Garmon itself, “the unifying consideration of our [labor preemption] decisions has been regard to the fact that Congress has entrusted administration of the labor policy for the Nation to a centralized administrative agency.” Even more to the point, the Court has described Garmon preemption as the “zone protected and reserved for . . . NLRB jurisdiction.” Without a...
Romania's Defense Minister Ionuț Moșteanu resigned Friday over false claims on his resume, marking the second time in recent weeks that a NATO country close to Russia has had to change its defense...