Quick Hits

• The NLRB general counsel is pushing the Board to reverse Biden-era Board precedents in a recent NLRB case brief.
• The brief argued for the reversal of the 2023 Stericycle standard, which established a presumption that workplace rules were unlawful.
• The brief urged a return to a prior framework dating back to the first Trump administration that focuses on a “reasonable employee” and balancing elements.
• The common thread in the proposals in the brief is a move away from standards that presumed employer conduct was unlawful toward standards that “genuinely” balance employee and employer interests.

The general counsel (GC) brief—filed on September 11, 2026, in Atlassian Corp., Case 16-CA-324971—asks the Board to overrule Biden-era precedents that have made employer compliance with the law in these areas increasingly difficult (and often frustrating). The new brief comes in a case concerning the enforcement of an employer’s social media rules for workers and is notable for laying out detailed proposed replacement standards that offer a window into the possible future of labor law.

A New Standard for Workplace Rules

What the law currently requires. Under the 2023 Stericycle standard, the GC need only show that a workplace rule has a “reasonable tendency to chill employees from exercising their” rights under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). This preliminary showing is quite easy to establish. At that point, the rule is considered presumptively...

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