The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Starbucks on Thursday in a challenge to a federal judge’s labor law ruling, making it harder for a key federal agency to intervene when A company is accused of illegally suppressing unionization.
Eight justices supported the majority opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a separate opinion that agreed with the overall judgment but dissented on certain points.
The ruling follows a case brought by Starbucks over the firing of seven workers in Memphis who were trying to unionize a store in 2022. The company said it fired them for allowing a television crew into a store farm. The workers, who called themselves the Memphis Seven, said they were fired because of their unionizing efforts and that the company generally did not enforce the rules they were accused of violating.
After the layoffs, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint claiming that Starbucks acted because the workers had “joined or aided the union and engaged in concerted activities, and to discourage employees from engage in these activities.” Separately, the board’s lawyers asked a federal judge in Tennessee for an injunction reinstating the workers, and the judge issued the order in August 2022.
The agency asks judges to reinstate workers in such cases because resolving the underlying legal issues can take years, during which time other workers may be discouraged from organizing, even if the fired workers eventually by winning.
In its petition to the Supreme Court, the company argued that federal courts have different standards when deciding whether to grant worker reinstatement injunctions, which the NLRB has the authority to seek under the National Labor Relations Act.
Some apply a looser standard, requiring the labor board to show that there was “reasonable cause” to believe the company violated labor laws. Others use a stricter standard, requiring the board to demonstrate that failing to reinstate the workers would cause “irreparable harm” and that the board would likely prevail in the case. (Some courts combine elements of both standards.)
Starbucks argued that the stricter standards for worker reinstatement should apply nationwide. The Labor Board argued that the apparent differences between the two standards were semantic and that in reality a single standard already existed, making Supreme Court intervention unnecessary.
The majority opinion rejected the jury’s argument that the differences between the two standards were semantic. “The reasonable grounds standard goes well beyond simply adjusting traditional criteria,” the majority wrote. “This significantly lowers the bar for obtaining a preliminary injunction.”
The opinion emphasizes that in cases where other laws allow judges to issue preliminary injunctions, the stricter standard is generally applied. She concluded that there was nothing in employment law to suggest that courts should depart from this approach when it comes to reinstating workers.
More than 400 Starbucks stores representing more than 10,000 workers in the United States have unionized since 2021, and the two sides began holding nationwide negotiations on a contract framework in April. Starbucks owns and operates approximately 10,000 stores across the country.
During arguments in April, the court appeared likely to side with Starbucks, with conservative justices questioning why the NLRB needed a looser standard than other agencies for seeking an injunction.
THE decision Thursday sent the case back to the lower courts.
Legal experts say the injunction is one of the NLRB’s most effective tools to prevent companies from illegally suppressing union activities, by discouraging companies from firing workers who try to organize.
The NLRB sought fewer than 20 injunctions last year. But they are a powerful deterrent to layoffs of workers who try to unionize, said Sharon Block, a Harvard Law School professor and former NLRB member. With stricter standards in place for getting laid-off workers reinstated, more companies could feel empowered. to suppress unionizing efforts, Ms. Block said.
In her opinion, Justice Jackson agreed that the board should have to demonstrate that there would have been irreparable harm if the workers were not reinstated and that it would likely succeed on the merits. But she argued that these elements were relatively easy to demonstrate in cases where the commission sought an injunction.
She argued, for example, that irreparable harm was almost trivial to prove, because labor law violations typically take years to come to trial. If a worker is laid off and there is no possibility of settlement for several years, she argued, that irreparably harms the board’s ability to remedy the situation – relief will inevitably arrive too soon. late.
Judge Jackson pointed to Congressional language suggesting that other workers might become discouraged and abandon their organizing drive even if the fired worker was ultimately cured.
But some believe the agency has used the injunction inappropriately in recent years, accusing the NLRB of assuming the role of an advocacy group. Don Schroeder, a partner at the law firm Foley & Lardner and an attorney specializing in labor and employment law, said the agency has used the injunction too frequently in recent years. He said it should be granted rarely.
“It gives a lot of leverage to the NLRB if the standard is very low,” Mr. Schroeder said. Granting an injunction is “not like spotting a unicorn,” he added. “But at the same time, this shouldn’t be an everyday situation.”
Starbucks said it was pleased with the Supreme Court’s decision. “Consistent federal standards are important to ensure that employees know their rights and that consistent work practices are followed, regardless of where they work and live in the country,” said a spokesperson for the business.
He added that the company is seeking to ratify collective bargaining agreements at unionized stores this year.
Lynne Fox, president of Workers United, the union representing Starbucks employees, said the decision was lamentable. “Workers have very few tools to protect and defend themselves when their employers break the law,” she said in a statement. “This makes today’s decision by the Supreme Court particularly egregious.”
The NLRB did not comment on the decision but pointed to an earlier comment from its general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo. “Without obtaining this temporary remedy, the violator will reap the full rewards of its violation of workers’ rights – for example by undermining a nascent organizing campaign – over time,” Ms. Abruzzo said, “because a board of administration will remedy in due time the decision will come too late to sufficiently remedy the damage.
The Starbucks case (Starbucks Corporation v. McKinney, No. 23-367) was the latest in a series of challenges to the NLRB’s authority. In February, Amazon argued in a legal filing that the advice itself was unconstitutional, after similar arguments from SpaceX and Trader Joe’s.
The Supreme Court’s decision also marks the continuation of a broader movement on the political right to strip power not only from the NLRB, but also from federal agencies more broadly. In January, the justices appeared poised to overturn a key legal doctrine known as Chevron deference.
Legal experts say overturning that principle, which establishes that judges must defer to federal agencies when interpreting ambiguous laws passed by Congress, would hamper the government’s regulatory power over the environment, healthcare and much more.
Combined with other cases before the court, “this is another element of the court that undermines the expert status of administrative agencies,” Ms. Block said.