Judge Swats Aside Newspaper’s Constitutional Challenge to NLRB

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s publisher couldn’t escape the National Labor Relations Board’s bid for an injunction by challenging the agency’s constitutionality.

Judge Cathy Bissoon in the Western District of Pennsylvania denied Tuesday the PG Publishing Co.’s motion to dismiss the NLRB’s petition in a brief docket entry rather than a standard written order.

“While PG’s positions are not outlandish by contemporary standards, this Court declines its invitation to ignore nearly a century’s worth of settled jurisprudence,” the Obama appointee said. “Although respect for stare decisis appears less ‘in vogue’ as of late, there is something to be said for tradition.”

The order continues the trend of constitutional attacks on the NLRB failing outside of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s jurisdiction.

Bissoon said she agreed with a Michigan federal judge’s ruling against an automotive supplier’s constitutional claims against the agency. That company failed to get early US Supreme Court intervention into the issue.

NLRB prosecutors are seeking an injunction against PG Publishing to force it to bargain with unions representing its workers and rescind unilateral changes it made to employees’ working conditions.

The publisher is represented by Littler Mendelson PC.

The case is Wilson v. PG Publishing Co., W.D. Pa., No. 24-01166, motion to dismiss denied 10/22/24.