Judge Permanently Blocks NLRB Case in Constitutional Challenge

An online social services platform secured a decision shielding it from a National Labor Relations Board unfair labor practice case, as a federal judge ruled there are constitutional defects with the agency officials’ job protections.

Findhelp is entitled to final declaratory and permanent injunctive relief on its claim that NLRB administrative law judges are unconstitutionally protected from being fired by the president and therefore unauthorized to prosecute the company for allegedly terminating union organizers in violation of federal labor law, Judge Mark Pittman of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled May 15.

The Trump-appointed judge’s previous preliminary injunction ruling against the labor board was later upheld by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in a consolidated appeal involving similar constitutional challenges to the NLRB’s structure.

Federal courts are assessing a slew of lawsuits alleging that elements of the NLRB’s structure violate the US Constitution, including the statutory protections limiting when the president can fire board members and administrative law judges. The issue has also created a circuit divide.

The Fifth Circuit upheld injunctions blocking the board from moving forward with ULP cases against SpaceX and other employers, dismissing the agency’s argument that the court lacked jurisdiction to halt those proceedings. Meanwhile, the Ninth and Third circuits held that the Norris-LaGuardia Act blocks federal courts from granting an injunction in a case involving or growing out of a “labor dispute.”

Relying on the Fifth Circuit’s reasoning in SpaceX v. NLRB, Pittman said the for-cause removal protections shielding ALJs are unconstitutional.

Board members’ tenure protections are also unconstitutional because the “significant” executive authority they exercise—including investigating, prosecuting, and adjudicating ULP charges— is “well outside” the narrow at-will removal exception established in the US Supreme Court’s 1935 Humphrey’s Executor v. US decision, which allowed Congress to place some limits on presidential authority to fire agency officials, the judge added.

Pittman rejected the board’s position that he can simply declare the removal restrictions unenforceable and allow the proceedings. The removal protections span multiple statutes and institutions, and “there’s no single provision the court can excise to cure the defect,” he said.

“Any potential fix would require the Court to” rewrite statutory text, invent new procedures, or transform the agency into an at-will president-controlled body that Congress never intended, the judge said. Allowing the proceedings against Findhelp “to go forward under a judicially altered framework would perpetuate that harm.”

The NLRB’s administrative adjudication of Findhelp’s case also violates the platform’s Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial, Pittman ruled.

Representatives for the parties didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The case is Aunt Bertha v. NLRB, N.D. Tex., No. 4:24-cv-00798, summary judgment granted 5/15/26.