Obama Supreme Court Nominee and the NLRB

If you are interested in how President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court may rule on labor issues, both the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) and Politico have published recent stories about Judge Merrick Garland’s record on the District of Columbia Circuit. Also, in the “On Labor” blog, author Hannah Belitz prepared a very thorough analysis of Judge’s Garland’s judicial record on NLRB cases. In her review, she found, “Between 1997 and 2016, Judge Garland wrote the majority opinion in 22 cases involving appeals of NLRB decisions. In all but four, Judge Garland upheld the entirety of the NLRB’s decision finding that an employer had committed unfair labor practices.” On the four other cases, she concluded, “Moreover, Judge Garland’s decisions in the four cases in which he did not defer entirely to the NLRB suggest an outlook that is generally favorable to union activity.”