A federal judge has rejected a Pittsburgh newspaper publisher's claims that the National Labor Relations Board's structure is unconstitutional, but suggested that decades of precedent backing the agency could be vulnerable to a growing number of legal challenges.
U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon in Pittsburgh said in a brief docket entry on Tuesday that a 1937 U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the National Labor Relations Act, which had been adopted two years earlier was still good law, contrary to arguments by PG Publishing, the owner of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Bissoon denied PG's motion to dismiss an NLRB petition seeking to force the company to bargain in good faith with three unions pending the outcome of a related administrative case at the board.
Bissoon said those arguments were foreclosed by the 1937 ruling in NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel and, much more recently, the Supreme Court's June ruling clarifying the standard the board must meet to win an injunction in court.
But the judge said that respect for the legal doctrine that courts should follow existing precedent, known as stare decisis, "appears less 'in vogue' as of late."
"While PG's positions are not outlandish by contemporary standards, this Court declines its invitation to ignore nearly a century's worth of settled jurisprudence," wrote Bissoon, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama.
The Post-Gazette and an NLRB spokeswoman declined to comment.
In the underlying board case, PG is accused of bargaining in bad faith with three of its employees' unions and unilaterally implementing changes to the working conditions of newsroom staff in the absence of a bargaining agreement. The company has denied wrongdoing.
The NLRB filed a court petition in August seeking a temporary order requiring PG to bargain in good faith with the unions until the board case is resolved. PG moved to dismiss the petition on Monday, arguing that NLRB administrative judges and the board's five members are improperly shielded from being removed at will by the president.
Bissoon on Tuesday said she agreed with a federal judge in Michigan who recently rejected those arguments in a lawsuit by auto parts manufacturer Yapp USA Automotive Systems. The Supreme Court last week denied Yapp's petition to block a board case against it from moving forward while it appeals the judge's decision.
At least four other federal judges have sided with the NLRB in bids by other companies, including Amazon, to block administrative cases from proceeding while they pursue challenges to the agency's structure.
Three judges in Texas, meanwhile, have blocked board cases against Elon Musk's SpaceX, pipeline company Energy Transfer, and the operator of a search engine for social services, prompting appeals by the NLRB.
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, widely regarded as the most conservative federal appeals court, has scheduled arguments in the Amazon and SpaceX cases for Nov. 18.
The case is Wilson v. PG Publishing Co, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, No. 2:24-cv-01166.
For the NLRB: Anne Tewksbury and Zuzana Murarova
For PG Publishing: Brian Hentosz and Morgan Dull of Littler Mendelson
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