The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has suffered a series of setbacks recently at the hands of federal judges. In December, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals largely struck down the NLRB's prohibition on class action waivers in arbitration agreements. Now, on January 6, 2014, the NLRB announced that it won’t seek Supreme Court review of two U.S. Court of Appeals decisions invalidating its Notice Posting Rule, which would have required most private sector employers to post a notice informing employees of their right to organize. The deadline for seeking Supreme Court review passed January 2.
The legal effect of this “non-event” is that it allows to stand two appellate court decisions that invalidated NLRB's 2011 adoption of a rule. In May 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held in National Ass'n of Manufacturers v. NLRB, 717 F.3d 947 (D.C. Cir. 2013) that requiring employers to post the statement of rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) would be inconsistent with Section 8(c) of the act, which essentially gives employers the right to speak freely to their employees so long as the communications aren’t coercive. The Court also held that NLRB lacked authority to promulgate the regulation, because it would have effectively modified the federal statutory time limit for filing unfair labor practice charges. A month later, the Fourth Circuit ruled against the NLRB and sustained a second challenge to the regulation in Chamber of Commerce v. NLRB, 721 F.3d 152 (4th Cir. 2013).
Had the rule gone into effect, the impact on employers who failed to post the notice could have been severe. While the NLRB doesn’t audit employers and can’t assess fines or penalties, the consequences of not posting the notice could have included: (1) extending the time limit for employees and unions to file charges with the NLRB, and (2) a...
