Washington Monthly by Ruben J. Garcia April 29, 2024

As Starbucks—and Elon Musk’s SpaceX—take aim at the New Deal-era body, the Roberts Court could severely curtail the right of workers to organize. Here’s how.

he recent lawsuit brought by Elon Musk’s SpaceX challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) might seem to have little to do with Starbucks. The Seattle-based coffee giant has publicly distanced itself from SpaceX’s frontal assault on the nearly 90-year-old labor law regulator. (See Elon Musk’s War on the New Deal—and Democracy by Caroline Fredrickson, the Georgetown Law Center professor, in the Washington Monthly.)

However, when Starbucks argued before the Supreme Court last week, the two companies seemed to be aiming at a common adversary. The SpaceX case uses constitutional theories of due process and the appointment of members of the NLRB to try to avoid legal repercussions for its attempt to stymie unionization.

Last week, by contrast, Starbucks was before the Roberts Court challenging the NLRB’s use of its statutory authority to remedy what the panel deems to be ongoing unfair labor practices at the 53-year-old beverage giant. The federal agency fulfills this function by using a typical tool in a lawyer’s toolbox—the status quo (or preliminary) injunction. Under Section 10(j) of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, the NLRB can ask a federal court to temporarily block employers from engaging in unfair and illegal labor practices (such as firing workers organizing unions) until the dispute can be settled. The arguments in Starbucks Corp. v. McKinney, the company’s challenge to an injunction reinstating the self-named “Memphis 7,” while an NLRB administrative judge decides whether it violated federal labor law by retaliating against the employees for their union organizing drive. Over the past four years, Starbucks, with a market capitalization hovering around $100 billion, has swatted back various attempts to bargain with its some 381,000 employees, although a framework to start bargaining may be in the works in exchange for settling pending unfair labor practices such as this one.

Meanwhile, the SpaceX suit has been trying to find a home in the friendly confines of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, arguably the most conservative circuit in the country, instead of in California, home of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Much to SpaceX and Musk’s probable chagrin, it looks like the case may land in the Ninth Circuit, believed by many conservatives as the equivalent of a workers’ paradise, where the NLRB would surely win, at least until the U.S. Supreme Court gets involved.

More: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/04/29/will-the-supreme-court-kill-the-national-labor-relations-board/

I'm surprised there is still a library there...

You can bet it's rarely utilized.

This is insane.

Mr. Trump should respond to this by saying that if the biden administration attempts this, that EVERY ONE of the palis "imported" will be promptly rounded up and "repatriated" after he assumes office.

The Daily Signal reported on how Clarke lied under oath:

The Justice Department’s Kristen Clarke confirmed on Wednesday that she did not disclose an arrest and expungement during her nomination to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, alleging that she was a victim of domestic abuse.

The Daily Signal reported Tuesday evening that Clarke, who testified in 2021 to senators that she had never been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime, was involved in a violent domestic dispute with her now ex-husband, one in which he alleged that she sliced his finger to the bone with a knife. ...

https://twitter.com/MaryMargOlohan/status/1785760610908619150