A major new court decision could remake federal labor law for years to come. This decision – issued on July 21 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit – signals that courts may soon revisit many longstanding legal standards governing labor law issues. The decision also highlights a new route for parties to appeal a broad range of cases decided by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
As background, the case involved an employer who sought to challenge the NLRB’s “successor bar” doctrine. Under this doctrine, when a new business owner assumes the prior owner’s union obligations as a “successor,” the new owner cannot challenge that incumbent union’s status as its employees’ representative for one year. In this case, the new owner’s employees provided evidence that they had rejected the union, so the new owner stopped recognizing that union. The NLRB applied its successor bar and held that the employer violated the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). After the employer appealed, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Loper Bright, which rejected the longstanding doctrine that afforded administrative agencies considerable insulation against challenges to their determinations and created a new standard for courts to review federal agency decisions on legal questions. The Court ordered the D.C. Circuit to review the NLRB’s successor bar under Loper Bright.
When the D.C. Circuit applied Loper Bright, that changed everything. The court noted that, under Loper Bright,...
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