23 Jul 2026

Letter to NLRB: Federal Appeals Court Ruling Bolsters Foundation’s Petition to Scrap Invented ‘Bars’ to Removing Incumbent Unions

Posted in News Releases

D.C. Circuit holds NLRB lacked legal authority to impose “successor bar,” suggests other non-statutory “bars” to decertification votes violate National Labor Relations Act

Washington, DC (July 23, 2026) – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has submitted a letter to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), notifying the agency of a new federal appeals court decision that strongly supports the Foundation’s pending petition, submitted last month, asking the Board to scrap a series of non-statutory barriers that trap employees in unwanted union representation.

In a letter to NLRB Executive Secretary Roxanne L. Rothschild, Foundation Vice President and Legal Director William Messenger informed the Board of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s July 21, 2026, decision in Hospital Menonita de Guayama, Inc. v. NLRB. The court held that the Board’s so-called “successor bar”—a policy that forces the new owner of a business to recognize and bargain with incumbent union officials for up to a year, regardless of whether that union actually has the support of a majority of workers—exceeds the Board’s authority under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

Applying the Supreme Court’s 2024 Loper Bright decision, which ended judicial deference to agencies’ interpretations of their own statutory authority, the D.C. Circuit independently reviewed the successor bar and found it cannot be squared with the law. The court concluded that the rule suspends both employees’ statutory right to freely choose whether to unionize and the requirement that a union actually hold majority support before it can act as workers’ exclusive bargaining agent.

The court further rejected the Board’s argument that broad “industrial peace and stability” policy goals could justify the rule, explaining that such rationales cannot substitute for actual statutory authority: “General concerns for industrial stability cannot save the lawfulness of the successor bar, which is really a rule of union stability that comes at the expense of employee freedom of association and self-organization.”

Ruling Reinforces Foundation’s June 2026 Petition to Eliminate Non-Statutory Election Bars

On June 10, 2026, the Foundation filed a formal rulemaking petition, asking the NLRB to initiate a rulemaking that would finally eliminate the successor bar, along with other NLRB-invented barriers—including the contract bar, recognition bar, settlement bar, and blocking charge policy—that prevent employees from voting to decertify a union that lacks majority support. The Foundation petition also calls for the Board both to abolish its “merger doctrine,” which allows union officials to combine bargaining units in ways that make decertification efforts virtually impossible, and to require incumbent unions to periodically prove majority support, rather than relying indefinitely on the results of a single, often decades-old, vote.

In this week’s letter, the Foundation argued that the D.C. Circuit’s reasoning extends well beyond the successor bar itself, supporting the broader position that none of the Board’s non-statutory election bars can survive scrutiny under the actual text of the NLRA. The Foundation asked the Board to move forward with rulemaking both for the reasons stated in its original June 2026 petition and, now, in light of the D.C. Circuit’s decision.

“This ruling confirms what rank-and-file workers have argued for years: NLRB officials cannot invent rules out of thin air that strip away employees’ fundamental right to decide for themselves whether they want a union,” said National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “The court’s decision makes clear that vague appeals to so-called ‘industrial stability’ cannot override the plain text of the law Congress actually passed, which guarantees employees a say over their own representation.

“The Board should take this opportunity to immediately act on our rulemaking petition and rid its rulebook of the successor bar, along with the contract bar, recognition bar, settlement bar, blocking charge policy, and merger doctrine—all of which share the same fatal flaw of trampling worker rights,” Mix added. “Every day these non-statutory barriers remain in place is another day workers are denied their legal right to vote out a union that doesn’t have their support.”

12 Jun 2026

National Right to Work Foundation Submits NLRB Rulemaking Petition: Overturn Biden-Era Rule and Expand Worker Free Choice

Posted in News Releases

Foundation petitions Labor Board to end non-statutory barriers to employees’ decertification rights, require incumbent unions prove majority status

Washington, DC (June 12, 2026) – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has filed a formal rulemaking petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) asking the new Board to initiate rulemaking to expand worker free choice and end various non-statutory policies that disenfranchise employees. In doing so, the NLRB would overturn changes made in a 2024 Biden-era rule that expanded the barriers workers face to exercising their legal right to vote out a union that lacks majority support.

The petition requests the agency overturn various NLRB-invented “bars” that deprive workers of their right to decertify incumbent unions that lack majority support. It also calls for the elimination of non-statutory policies used to delay or block worker-requested decertification elections and calls for the NLRB to require union officials to regularly prove worker support or else lose their extraordinary government-granted monopoly bargaining powers.

The series of reforms would bring NLRB rules in line with the actual text of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the law the NLRB is charged with neutrally enforcing. This rulemaking is especially necessary following the Supreme Court’s 2024 Loper Bright decision, which curtailed judicial deference to an administrative agency’s ability to expansively interpret its statutory power.

NLRB-Invented “Election Bars,” “Blocking Charge” Policy, and “Merger Doctrine” Improperly Stifle Employees’ Right to Hold Decertification Votes

As the rulemaking petition points out, Section 9(c) of the NLRA commands that the Board “shall” conduct an election when a question of representation exists outside a one year period following a previous election. This means that the existing non-statutory “election bars,” along with the “blocking charge” policy, improperly nullify employees’ 9(a) right to an election.

The Foundation’s petition calls for the repeal of all of the NLRB’s informal “bars”—none of which are found in the text of the NLRA—that keep employees trapped in union ranks even when a majority want to vote to remove the union. This includes eliminating: (1) the “contract bar,” which disenfranchises workers for up to three years when a union contract is in place; (2) the “recognition bar,” which blocks decertification after union officials gain power without a secret-ballot election through an abuse-prone “card check” process; (3) the “successor bar,” which blocks workers’ right to decertify a union following a change in employer ownership; and (4) the “settlement bar,” which prevents worker-requested elections after the union and employer settle charges without an admission of wrongdoing.

The rulemaking request also asks the Board to overturn the other non-statutory policies that the NLRB currently applies to the detriment of employees’ 9(a) rights. For example, if employees can file their petition at a time when one of the various invented “bars” doesn’t apply, union officials frequently use the NLRB’s blocking charge policy to delay decertification elections from being held. This punishes employees seeking to exercise their legal rights on the basis of unproven allegations made by the union against an employer.

The petition also calls for the elimination of the NLRB’s “merger doctrine,” which lets union bosses merge smaller bargaining units into a massive multi-state and/or multi-employer unit, often comprised of thousands or tens of thousands of workers. This allows union officials to manipulate bargaining units in a way that makes it effectively impossible for workers to even gather the signatures needed to exercise their right to hold a decertification election.

NLRB Should End Presumption that a One-Time Union Organizing Win Warrants Perpetual Power Over Employees

Finally, the petition requests the NLRB update its standard for when union officials are entitled to presumption of majority status by requiring union officials periodically prove a majority of employees support their representation. As the petition notes, “over 90% of private-sector employees who are subject to union representation have never voted on that union representation,” a problem created by the fact that one vote or card check years or decades ago currently authorizes union officials to wield bargaining powers over workers without any further evidence of actual employee support.

To remedy this, the petition proposes that unions must prove majority employee support after certain time periods elapse after an election or recognition. The petition notes “[t]he Board’s ‘one-vote, one-time’ presumption is not required by the Act and so defies democratic norms as to be arbitrary and capricious,” meaning it is fully within the NLRB’s authority to implement such a commonsense change.

“For years, employees have sought to exercise their clear legal right in federal law to vote out incumbent unions they oppose, only for NLRB-invented policies to crush their efforts,” stated National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Just as politicians must stand for regular election, union officials should have to regularly prove that they have the support of at least a bare majority of the workers they claim to ‘represent.’

“Especially after the Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision, the NLRB has a duty to enforce the text of the law, not abrogate employees’ clear rights under the NLRA by perpetuating these non-statutory rules that leave employees trapped in unions that lack majority support,” added Mix. “Acting on this rulemaking petition would not only bring NLRB rules on elections better in line with the text of the law but would also send a powerful message that the new Board majority is prioritizing pro-worker policies by expanding employees’ legal rights to remove incumbent unions that don’t serve workers’ interests.”

12 Oct 2025

Workers Nationwide Urge Trump NLRB to End Policies Trapping Them Under Union Power

Posted in Newsletter Articles

The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, May/June 2025 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.

NLRB-invented policies currently allow union bosses to block worker-requested votes

Theresa Hause, an Oregon-based school bus driver, wants the Trump NLRB to end the so-called “merger doctrine” that grants union officials the power to combine workplaces into giant, inescapable mega-units.

Theresa Hause, an Oregon-based school bus driver, wants the Trump NLRB to end the so-called “merger doctrine” that grants union officials the power to combine workplaces into giant, inescapable mega-units.

WASHINGTON, DC – During the Biden Administration, biased, pro-Big Labor National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) bureaucrats went out of their way to undermine the idea that workers and workers alone should choose whether or not they want a union. Rolling back multiple National Right to Work Foundation-backed reforms that made it easier for workers to vote out unions they didn’t want was a prime example of this.

But the Biden NLRB’s extremism is only the latest example of how federal labor law is biased against workers opposed to union affiliation. The truth is that biased bureaucrats on the NLRB have, for decades, burdened independent-minded workers with arbitrary barriers to freeing themselves from union influence. Many of these policies — which are the inventions of NLRB decisions and appear nowhere in the National Labor Relations Act’s (NLRA) text — let union bosses block workers from exercising their statutory right to vote to remove a union.

Bus Drivers Fight Forced Dues in Huge, Inescapable Teamsters Unit

The Trump Administration taking control of the NLRB in Washington, D.C., has presented workers around the country who want to escape union influence with a new opportunity to attack these restrictions. Foundation attorneys are already helping workers lead the charge for reform to create precedents that will allow others to remove unions opposed by most workers.

Last December, Theresa Hause, a Washington State-based school bus driver, submitted to the NLRB a deauthorization petition which contained employee support well over the necessary threshold needed to trigger a vote to strip Teamsters Local 58 bosses of their forced-dues power in Hause’s workplace. Hause and her fellow drivers are employed by First Student, Inc.

She was surprised to learn during NLRB proceedings that First Student management and Teamsters union officials had covertly signed an agreement “merging” Hause’s small unit of workers into a much larger national unit, composed of thousands of Teamsters-controlled bus drivers across the country.

Because of the NLRB’s so-called “merger doctrine” policy, Hause and her colleagues are now in this “mega-unit,” and any petition to end the union’s forced-dues power (or remove the union completely) needs to contain signatures from at least 30% of the “mega-unit” — thousands of people Hause has never met — to be considered valid. The NLRB official that dismissed Hause’s petition even ruled that the fact employees were kept in the dark about this merger was irrelevant, outrageously saying “there is nothing in the merger doctrine that requires acquiescence or even notification of employees of a change in a bargaining unit.”

Hause’s Foundation-provided attorneys are challenging the merger doctrine in an appeal of Hause’s case to the NLRB in D.C., arguing among other things that the policy violates employee free choice and that it serves as a protection racket for established unions.

While Hause and her colleagues are fighting for a vote to free themselves from forced dues, attacking the merger doctrine also has significant ramifications for workers seeking to decertify a union. Foundation attorneys have represented many workers who have been shanghaied into huge, inescapable work units against their will. That includes a group of less than 10 Wisconsin First Student workers who filed a majority-backed petition to remove Teamsters officials as soon as allowed by federal law, only to be stymied by the merger doctrine because they had been secretly “merged” into a multi-company unit of around 24,000 workers in multiple states.

WV Homecare Workers Not ‘Settling’ for ‘Settlement Bar’

Meanwhile, in West Virginia, a Foundation-assisted employee of senior homecare nonprofit McDowell County Commission on Aging is attacking the NLRB’s use of another union boss-friendly policy to block his and his coworkers’ effort to kick out Service Employees International Union (SEIU) bosses: the so-called “settlement bar,” which lets unions and employers unilaterally agree in settlements to end employee-led union decertification efforts.

The employee, John Reeves, and his coworkers cast ballots in a July 2024 vote to remove SEIU union officials, but are now battling claims that a settlement SEIU bosses and Commission management signed should relegate those ballots to the trash bin. The SEIU and Commission entered into the settlement to end the decertification and resolve unfair labor practice allegations union agents had filed against the employer. That supposed employer wrongdoing was cited as the impetus for Reeves and his coworkers’ desire to remove the union — even though it was never admitted to by the employer nor proven by union lawyers.

Instead of letting Reeves show why the union’s accusations didn’t cause his employees’ disenchantment with the union, regional NLRB officials instead invoked the settlement bar and dismissed the decertification effort, based on the phony “resolution” of speculative charges by the union. Reeves is asking the NLRB in Washington, D.C., to review his case.

Reform Needed to Undo Coercive Policy

“Ms. Hause’s and Mr. Reeves’ cases provide just a sampling of the grand buffet of privileges the NLRB has granted union bosses over the years,” observed National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens. “Union bosses and complicit employers should not be able to cut workers off from exercising their basic right to remove unpopular union bosses, yet that’s exactly what both the ‘merger doctrine’ and ‘settlement bar’ allow.

“If members of the Trump NLRB are dedicated to defending the rights of all American workers, they will focus not only on countering the extensive damage done to individual worker rights by the Biden Labor Board, but also on digging deeper to undo the web of non-statutory coercive union boss powers that has been created over decades,” Semmens added.

21 Mar 2025

WV Homecare Worker Asks Federal Labor Board to Stop Gambit by SEIU and Employer to Destroy Ballots in Vote to Remove Union

Posted in News Releases

Employee attacks NLRB policy that union and employer used to “agree” to throw out ballots already cast and block future votes to remove union

Welch, WV (March 21, 2025) – An employee of senior homecare nonprofit McDowell County Commission on Aging has requested the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington, D.C., overturn a regional NLRB official’s ruling that tossed his and his coworkers’ ballots in a union decertification vote because his employer and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) officials agreed in a settlement to stifle the worker-led union removal effort.

The worker, John Reeves, submitted his Request for Review with free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys. In addition to asking the NLRB to order regional labor board officials to process Reeves’ petition for a union removal vote at his workplace, the Request for Review attacks regional NLRB officials’ application of the so-called “settlement bar” to his petition. The “settlement bar” is a non-statutory NLRB policy that lets union bosses and employers unilaterally block an employee-requested union decertification vote after finalizing a settlement.

Specifically, the Request for Review points out that the issues being settled by the union and employer – union-alleged accusations of employer wrongdoing that were never proven by the Board or admitted to by the employer in the settlement – provide absolutely no support for the idea that Reeves and his coworkers’ vote should be invalidated. The Request for Review states:

“[T]he Board has held that employer unfair labor practices can justify the dismissal of a decertification petition only if: (1) the Board holds the employer actually committed the unfair labor practices or (2) the employer admits in a settlement that it committed the unfair labor practices…Neither scenario exists here.”

Employer and SEIU Union Bosses Colluded to Eliminate Workers’ Shot at Voting Out Union

Reeves’ effort to remove the SEIU union began in June 2024, when he filed a petition asking the NLRB to administer a union decertification election at the McDowell County Commission on Aging. The petition had enough employee signatures under NLRB rules to trigger such a vote.

Commission management and union officials agreed to terms of a union decertification election and Reeves and his coworkers voted on July 9, 2024. However, regional NLRB officials announced the morning that the election took place that Reeves and his coworkers’ ballots would be impounded because of pending unfair labor practice allegations SEIU union officials had against Commission management

After continued delays from NLRB officials that prevented the ballots from being counted, Reeves sought to intervene in the union’s unfair labor practice case. Reeves wanted to demonstrate that there was no connection between the union’s accusations of employer wrongdoing and his and his colleagues’ desire to vote the union out, and thus no reason existed for regional NLRB officials to continue blocking a vote count. But the regional NLRB denied him this request.

In January 2025 – six months after Reeves and his colleagues had voted – Commission officials and SEIU union bosses entered into an agreement to settle the union’s unfair labor practice charges. Even though the regional NLRB never proved that the employer’s alleged malfeasance had any effect on the decertification effort and the Commission never admitted to such malfeasance in the settlement, the regional NLRB approved a unilateral decision by the employer and union to dismiss the decertification petition and “not entertain a new decertification for a…period of four months.”

“[The regional NLRB] dismissed Reeves’ decertification petition because the Employer settled an unfair labor practice case, even though the settlement contained no ‘admissions clause,’ and therefore the Union’s allegations were unproven and speculative,” Reeves’ Request for Review reads.

“Mr. Reeves and his coworkers, who voted months ago on whether to remove SEIU union officials from their workplace, deserve to have their voices heard and their votes counted,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “The NLRB’s ‘settlement bar’ policy is simply another way for self-interested union bosses to game the system and maintain control over dissenting workers, and it’s especially egregious when complicit employers and NLRB officials use it to turn speculative and unproven allegations of wrongdoing into a barrier between workers and their individual rights.”

“Workers have a statutory right under federal law to hold decertification votes, and employers and union officials should not be permitted to collusively ‘settle’ disputes by stripping workers of their right to vote to remove a union that most of them oppose,” added Mix.