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Kline, Roe Statement on Court Striking Down NLRB Poster Regulation

House Committee on Education and the Workforce Chairman John Kline (R-MN) and Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Chairman Phil Roe (R-TN) released the following joint statement after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia invalidated a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rule that would have punished employers for failing to post a biased notice of workers’ labor rights in the workplace:

Today’s federal appeals court decision is a win for workers and job creators nationwide. The NLRB’s vague and biased poster regulation was nothing more than a marketing campaign for Big Labor at the expense of workers and employers. It’s time the board stopped rewriting the law to advance a political agenda and started applying the law as prescribed by Congress.

NOTE: In December 2012, House Republicans filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to urge the court the strike down the poster regulation. The congressional brief raised two critical legal issues:

  1. Congress did not – and has not – granted the board the authority to require a general notice posting by employers. Unlike the National Labor Relations Act, other labor and employment laws explicitly authorize notice postings. Absent that explicit authority, and a clear intent by the authors of the National Labor Relations Act to withhold that authority, the board’s regulation exceeds its lawful powers; and
       
  2. Congress has restricted the board’s authority to actual parties, in pending cases, and adjudicated facts based on an evidentiary hearing. The limited scope of the board’s authority is central to the law’s constitutional standing, and it cannot be expanded at the whim of the board majority.

A similar brief was filed in two federal district courts in 2011.

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