“Loper Bright reaffirmed that courts have an independent obligation to interpret statutes and not defer to an agency’s interpretation of the scope of its statutory authority.”
The NLRB erred in establishing and applying its “successor bar” doctrine, which had compelled the new owner of a business to recognize and bargain with an incumbent union for up to a year irrespective of the union’s majority support among employees, the D.C. Circuit held. Reconsidering one of its own prior decisions in an unfair-labor-practice case in view of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 144 S. Ct. 2244 (2024), the federal appeals court observed that Section 7 of the NLRA provides employees with the unqualified right “to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing” or “to refrain” from such activity; Section 9(a) conditions a union’s status as the “exclusive” bargaining representative on having the support of “the majority of the employees”; and the successor bar nullifies these statutory protections for up to a year after a successor employer assumes control of a business. Senior Judge Randolph dissented (Hospital Menonita de Guayama, Inc. v. NLRB, Nos. 22-1163 and 22-1180 (D.C. Cir. July 21, 2026)).
“Successor bar.” The hospital challenged the lawfulness of the NLRB’s “successor bar,” which prohibits any challenge to an incumbent union’s representation status for up to one year after a business changes ownership. Adopted in an...
The UAE AI Office has issued a statement debunking social media claims that a government website is fraudulent and confirming that it is an authentic website belonging to an official government en...