The United States Supreme Court has ruled the recess appointments President Barack Obama made to the National Labor Relations Board in 2012 were unconstitutional, effectively invalidating hundreds of decisions made by those board members.
The Supreme Court justices came to a unanimous decision in NLRB v. Noel Canning Thursday in a ruling that could have major effects on employers like hospitals and health systems.
Hundreds of decisions made by the Board between January 2012 and summer 2013 are now invalid and will have to be revisited by the current NLRB members, according to Steven Suflas, managing partner in the New Jersey office of law firm Ballard Spahr. "The agency is really going to be under some extreme pressure," Mr. Suflas says. "Now their workload is basically doubled." So, cases currently in litigation before the NLRB will most likely have extended wait times.
One such decision involves Phoenix-based Banner Health System, according to a Wall Street Journal report. In the decision, the NLRB ruled against a Banner Health policy prohibiting employees from talking about ongoing employee misconduct investigations.
However, Mr. Suflas expects most of the now-invalidated decisions to be upheld by the current NLRB, saying they will "simply be rubberstamped when the case comes back to the Board."
In the meantime, though, the SCOTUS decision means a time of uncertainly for healthcare employers, as clarification on some of the NLRB's controversial decisions from the courts of appeal will be further prolonged.
Beyond the implications on the NLRB itself, this SCOTUS decision has far broader ramifications, as it applies to recess appointments in all governmental agencies, like HHS and the Department of Labor. It's "sweepingly broad," Mr. Suflas says, and more ramifications could surface as the decision is picked apart.