Since January 2025, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) has lacked a quorum of three Senate-confirmed Members, leaving it unable to decide appeals of administrative law judges’ decisions in unfair labor practice cases and unable to resolve disputed issues in representation case proceedings. Although it has been unable to do so, from a day-to-day perspective, most matters before the agency are proceeding on a business-as-usual basis at the Regional Office level – unfair labor practice charges continue to be investigated and litigated, and representation case petitions continue to be processed, and union elections conducted.
Nonetheless, several states have moved to pass state laws addressing the NLRB’s inability to act. On September 10, 2025, the California Senate approved Assembly Bill 288 (“AB 288”). If signed into law, AB 288 would expand the jurisdiction of California’s Public Employment Relations Board, and would authorize employees of private-sector employers, who ordinarily are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the NLRB, to petition the state board for relief when the NLRB lacks a quorum or otherwise lacks the staffing or funding to fulfill its statutory duties. AB 288 would mark an extraordinary departure from 90 years of near-exclusive federal control over private-sector labor relations since the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935.
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