A judge in Brooklyn ruled last week that New York's law was preempted by the National Labor Relations Act, which gives the NLRB exclusive jurisdiction over cases involving most private-sector workers' rights to unionize and to advocate for better working conditions.
The judge had already blocked the law from being implemented pending Amazon's lawsuit. California's law has also been blocked in a separate case brought by the NLRB.
The labor board made the same legal claims as Amazon in the lawsuit that it filed last September and dropped on Monday. The board's general counsel, Crystal Carey, said in a statement that the judge in Amazon's case had confirmed the NLRB's position was correct.
“While states certainly have important roles in protecting their citizens in other areas, this type of legislation leads to less protection, less consistency in the application of labor law, and runs completely afoul of the United States Constitution,” said Carey, a Trump appointee.
James' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The state laws were a response to a backlog of hundreds of cases that piled up at the federal board after Trump fired the Democrat, Gwynne Wilcox. She sued and was briefly reinstated by a judge, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit paused and then reversed that ruling.
The U.S. Supreme Court last month upheld Trump's removal of a Democrat from the Federal Trade Commission, finding that a law shielding FTC commissioners from being removed without cause was invalid. Wilcox's case turns on a nearly identical law applying to NLRB members that the D.C. Circuit also struck down. Her petition for Supreme Court review of that decision is pending.
The U.S. Senate last year confirmed two Trump nominees to seats on the board, allowing it to function again and begin tackling the backlog.
The term of the board's lone Democratic member, David Prouty, expires in late August. The agency could lose its quorum once again if the Senate does not act on Trump's nomination of Prouty for a second term by August 7, its last scheduled day before a five-week break.
NLRB to dismiss challenge after New York law is blocked
The National Labor Relations Board on Monday said it would dismiss a challenge to a New York law allowing a state agency to hear private-sector labor cases when the federal board lacks a quorum after a judge struck it down in a separate case brought by Amazon.com.
The board and office of New York Attorney General Letitia James in a joint filing in Syracuse, New York, federal court said the agency had stipulated to the dismissal of the case after the state acknowledged that it is permanently enjoined from enforcing the 2025 law.
New York and California passed laws empowering state panels — both called the Public Employment Relations Board in their respective states — to hear cases normally reserved for the five-member NLRB after President Donald Trump, a Republican, fired a Democratic board member and left the board without a quorum of at least three members to issue decisions.
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