National Labor Relations Board’s authority faces challenge in Starbucks Supreme Court case

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• Geoff Bennett:

  The U.S. Supreme Court today heard arguments in a case that could have major implications for labor rights.

  The court looked at a challenge brought by Starbucks against a lower court decision to reinstate seven baristas in Memphis who were fired by the company after they announced plans to unionize.

  Washington Post labor reporter Lauren Kaori Gurley is with us. She was at the court today and has been following this case.

  Thanks so much for being with us.

  So, Lauren, walk us through the arguments that the justices heard today and how this is all linked to the Starbucks union dispute.

• Lauren Kaori Gurley, The Washington Post:

  When workers in the United States unionize, if they are retaliated against by their employers, the National Labor Relations Board, the agency — the federal agency that oversees workers union rights in the United States, has the right to go to a federal court and ask for immediate relief in the form of forcing a company like Starbucks to reinstate fired workers.

  So that's exactly actually what happened a few years ago at the very beginning of this Starbucks union drive that has now sort of spread like wildfire across the country. There are more than 400 union stores now. Starbucks fired seven union activists at a Memphis store. And a court ordered that they had to reinstate them.

  Now, Starbucks is arguing that that reinstatement should not have happened. They said that they fired those workers because they had invited a TV crew into their store after hours, which was against their policy, and they said it was totally within their right to fire those baristas.

  So what Starbucks was challenging today at the Supreme Court was the test that the federal court used in sort of determining whether they had to — whether they could order the reinstatement of those baristas. And so the NLRB was sort of defending sort of the authority that it has in going to the federal courts to ask for that relief and the standard that's used to grant that relief.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Mm-hmm. And based on the justices questions, do you have a sense of where they're leaning in this case?

• Lauren Kaori Gurley:

  It very much seemed like they were poised to agree with Starbucks on this one that the NLRB — they feel like the NLRB has wielded too much power in that Memphis case, that there should be a consistent standard that's applied all — across all circuit courts in the United States, which there is not right now.

  And so it seems likely that they will change this test, which — or sort of modify this test, so it's more consistent across courts, across the United States, which labor advocates say could really have a chilling effect for union organizing in the United States.

  And I will say it wasn't just one side of the ideological spectrum. The majority of the justices, with the exception of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, really made that point. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson appeared sort of more convinced by the NLRB's case that Congress sort of bestowed authority in the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board, to conduct investigations, and that the weight of their findings should be prioritized by federal courts.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Well, tell us more about the possible implications of this case.

• Lauren Kaori Gurley:

  Labor activists really believe this could have a chilling effect on labor organizing and union organizing in the United States, which is having this sort of resurgent moment of popularity.

  You may have heard about it, not just at Starbucks, but at the autoworkers who unionized last Friday in Chattanooga, Tennessee, at Amazon, at REI, at Trader Joe's. And these sort of — these court orders that sort of are at the heart of this case, they're not just used to reinstate fired workers. They also can be used to sort of request bargaining orders that companies must adhere, to reopen to close stores, all sorts of ways in which companies retaliate against workers for unionizing.

  So I think, if there is a higher standard, which seems likely that the court will do, there will be a much higher bar for getting that sort of relief for workers, which could make them more afraid to unionize or which could cause union campaigns to sort of die out if employers retaliate against workers.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Lauren Kaori Gurley with The Washington Post, thanks so much for sharing your reporting with us.

• Lauren Kaori Gurley:

  Thank you. Appreciate it.

  And the Supreme Court is back tomorrow with another high-stakes case out of Idaho looking at access to emergency abortions. We will have the latest on what's shaping up to be a busy final week of the court's argument calendar.