NLRB Case Is 'Cheerful Bacchanal of Subordinating Conjunctions'
The U.S. Supreme Court considered Tuesday whether the National Labor Relations Board may operate with only two members.
A ruling against the NLRB could call into question more than 500 labor-management decisions, the National Law Journal reports. The board generally has five members, but it has been operating with only two—one a Democratic appointee and the other a Republican—for nearly 27 months. Presidential nominees to the board were blocked first by Democrats during the George W. Bush administration and now by Republicans, the Associated Press reports.
The NLJ calls the case “a classic statutory interpretation challenge.” Slate deemed the oral arguments “a cheerful bacchanal of subordinating conjunctions.”
The National Labor Relations Act states that the NLRB “is authorized to delegate to any group of three or more members any or all of the powers which it may itself exercise.” But another portion of the statute says that a “vacancy in the board shall not impair the right of the remaining members to exercise all of the powers of the board, and three members of the board shall, at all times, constitute a quorum of the board, except that two members shall constitute a quorum of any group designated pursuant to the first sentence hereof.”
The NLJ account of the oral arguments says the outcome of the case could turn on the significance of the phrase beginning with the word “except.”
The case is New Process Steel v. NLRB.
